Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls | Old pension creates a new narrative in favour of SP
The Hindu
‘Consolidation is across party lines and beyond the pale of caste and religion’
Anuj Kumar
This time, the “limbs of the government”, said a government school teacher in Barhaliyaganj, are working against the BJP. “Everybody wants the old pension scheme to be restored but this government didn’t budge,” he said, refusing to be named, on the sidelines of the Akhilesh Yadav rally in Azamgarh on Saturday.
Since Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has announced the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme as a poll plank in 2022, “Vote of OPS”, the slogan of primary and secondary education teachers, has begun to mean “Vote for SP”. The BJP leadership maintained that the OPS would cause an unnecessary financial burden on the government and instead the government would focus on creating new jobs.
“We are bound by service rules. We don’t support any particular party but none can stop us from voting to secure our future,” said Yogendra Singh, an English teacher in Manohar Bhushan Inter College, Bareilly. who is coordinating the demand in the court, on the ground and, of course, social media.
After the Rajasthan government decided to restore OPS, “our excitement has doubled,” he said.
The numbers are not insignificant. Mr. Singh said up to 20 lakh people were affected by the New Pension Scheme. “On the basis of five votes per household around one crore have been mobilised in favour of OPS. It roughly amounts to 6,000-7,000 votes per constituency. Whichever party comes to power, it can’t afford to ignore this number.”
Introduced by the State government in April 2005, under the NPS, the pension depends on the corpus saved by the employee during service and is subject to rise and fall in investment value.