DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today announced the SAD would introduce the Old Pension Scheme and regularize all contractual employees once it forms the next government in the State in 2027.

In a statement here, the SAD president also announced that all pending Dearness Allowance installments as well as arrears of employees would be released immediately once the SAD came into power in the State. "We will also form a new Pay Commission to revise salaries and allowances of all government employees", he added. Asserting that successive Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governments had betrayed the employees, Mr Sukhbir Badal said "the sixth pay commission which was formed by the Congress government in 2016 withdrew the higher scales given to employees by the fifth pay commission formed during the tenure of S Parkash Singh Badal". He said even money due to employees on account of hike in salaries was pending. Speaking about the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), Mr Badal said the AAP government had tried to hoodwink employees by issuing a notification to implement the OPS on November 18, 2022. "Despite the issuance of this notification, OPS has not been implemented. This shows the AAP government cannot be trusted and has no intention of implementing OPS". He said the SAD was committed to implementing OPS immediately on the formation of its government. Mr Badal also announced that all contractual employees would be regularized once the SAD formed the government. "There are more than 35,000 contractual employees who have been awaiting regularization of their services since the last seven years. Both the Congress and AAP governments have betrayed them. We will regularize their services on coming to power".

The SAD president also announced that three installments of Dearness Allowance (DA) of employees were pending and that each employee was losing Rs 5,000 per month on this account. He said that SAD government will give this pending amount on forming government. He said similarly Pay Commission arrears of Rs three lakh per employee were pending. "We will release all pending dues to employees". He also announced that the Assured Career Progress scheme which had been introduced by the erstwhile SAD government had also been tinkered with by successive Congress and AAP governments and had been discontinued.
(editor@dailyworld.in)