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div id=”pcl-full-content”>Around 17 lakh Maharashtra government employees will go on a one-day strike on Thursday over their demand to implement the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
Though state government officials held a meeting with representatives of the employees’ unions on Wednesday evening, the talks were inconclusive, following which the unions decided to go ahead with their original plan of going on strike from December 14.
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This is the second strike by Maharashtra government employees demanding OPS. In March 2023, after a similar strike, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had announced the setting up of a committee comprising former senior bureaucrats Subodh Kumar, K P Bakshi and Sudhir Kumar Shrivastava to study the old and new pension schemes. The panel was asked to submit a report with recommendations in three months.
The three-member committee submitted its report to Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Ajit Pawar in November 2023. Speaking at the Legislative Council in the ongoing Winter Session of the state legislature, Ajit Pawar had said that the government was positive on the demand and a decision on OPS was likely before the next budget session after studying the report.
Earlier, Deputy Chief Minister and then finance minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that the government was not opposed to the implementation of OPS, in principle. The government, he said, wanted to study the effects of its financial burden on the state and would take a decision after doing so.
Maharashtra had become the first BJP-ruled state to positively consider OPS at a time when the Opposition Congress has been demanding it across the country.
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