The Centre’s rigidity on pension updation is forcing employees and officers of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to react and go on a two-day mass leave on September 4 and 5.

“We have waited patiently for long and persuaded various authorities quietly and in a peaceful manner,” said the United Front of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees (UFRBOE).

Successive RBI Governors and its Central Board have been sympathetic and have repeatedly taken up the pension updation issue with the Centre but to no effect, said UFRBOE leaders Samir Ghosh, Suryakanta Mahadik, Keshav Jagtap and Ajay Kumar Sinha.

The RBI now has a pension corpus fund of about ₹16,000 crore, borne out of its contribution on account of employees’ provident fund.

This is sufficient to defray the expenses of pension updation and one more option, without any cost to the exchequer, unlike in the case Central Government retirees.

In 2011, the RBI formally requested the Centre to allow it to extend one option for retirees willing to switch over to pension in view of improvement in pension regulations and wage revisions.

In 2014, the RBI formally proposed that the pension amount of old pensioners who are suffering be improved, the UFRBOE leaders said.

Last year (2017), the Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation unanimously recommended that the RBI be allowed to extend one more option of pension.

It termed the Centre’s conduct in this regard as arbitrary, illegal and whimsical.

The RBI is within its powers to improve its pension scheme.

The report was submitted to the Centre but was returned.

In October 2017, the RBI Governor formally wrote to the Centre, quoting extensively from the Parliamentary Committee report that the RBI would like to improve pension and provide option.

The Centre’s argument is that agreeing to the RBI’s proposal will increase expenses and give rise to ‘contagion effect’, which is absolutely untenable, the UFRBOE argued.

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