Shinde government faces OPS heat as unions threaten strike

Synopsis To put further pressure on the state government, the State Gazetted Officers (class 1) Federation is also planning to participate in the strike seeking to bring back OPS. “We are fully supporting the demand of the MSGEF to bring back the Old Pension Scheme. We have called an urgent meeting on Monday of our federation where we would take a call on participating in the strike as the old pension issue affects us too.

We want to have a one-on-one meeting with the chief minister and deputy chief minister to resolve the issue,” said Vinod Desai, president of the State Gazetted Officers Federation. The Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra is under pressure to bring back the Old Pension Scheme. The Maharashtra State Government Employees Federation (MSGEF) has called for a strike from March 14 if the state government does not accede to its demands.

The state government has called for talks with MSGEF on Monday morning and is burning the midnight oil looking to find a ‘middle path’ to assuage the employee unions. To put further pressure on the state government, the State Gazetted Officers (class 1) Federation is also planning to participate in the strike seeking to bring back OPS. “We are fully supporting the demand of the MSGEF to bring back the Old Pension Scheme.

We have called an urgent meeting on Monday of our federation where we would take a call on participating in the strike as the old pension issue affects us too. We want to have a one-on-one meeting with the chief minister and deputy chief minister to resolve the issue,” said Vinod Desai , president of the State Gazetted Officers Federation . Desai said state chief secretary Manu Kumar Srivastava has called for a meeting of the MSGEF on Monday.

“We would like to have a one-on-one meeting with chief minister Eknath Shinde and the deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis to resolve the issue, instead of just meeting the chief secretary as this is a political decision,” said Desai. Sources in the government said Shinde and Fadnavis, who also hold the finance portfolio, will meet with opposition leaders on Monday to arrive at a solution to the issue. Fadnavis has said last week that going back to the old pension scheme would mean that the state has to spend 85% of its total annual expenditure on the salary and pension bill from 2030.

Employees Associations however claimed that the figure given by Fadnavis was ‘misleading’. “The figure quoted by him is incorrect as he has also included the interest being repaid by the state in this figure,” said a MSGEF representative. For BJP , OPS is fast becoming a hot potato as the party feels this may have an impact on the assembly and parliamentary polls.

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