Tamil Nadu Govt staff up their ante, oppn continues tirade

A statement from Tamil Nadu Secretariat Association issued by its president K Venkatesan and secretary S Harishankar said the committee formed in the last year of its tenure by the DMK government was only aimed at delaying the process of identifying a pension scheme for them while they had been very clear on the revival of the old scheme that was done away with in 2003.

The Association recalled the present Chief Minister M K Stalin expressing his solidarity with its members, who had been persistently demanding the restoration of the old pension scheme, from 2017 to 2021 when he was the opposition party leader and said that they opposed a committee set up by the then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa then and even went to court against it.

The present government had been giving them the hope of bringing back the old scheme for four years after coming to power and suddenly announced the committee comprising additional chief secretary for rural development and Panchayat Raj department Gangadeep Singh Bedi, former director of Madras School of Economic K R Shanmugam and deputy secretary in the finance department Pratik Tayal, which said was a betrayal.

In their statement, the Secretariat staff said that the formation of the committee was nothing but a ploy to delay the process and hence wanted the withdrawal of the three-member committee and the implementation of the old pension scheme.

The mandate of the committee is to study the old pension scheme, the contributory pension scheme that is now in force since 2003 in the State and the Union Government’s integrated pension scheme and come out with a decision on what to implement.

But the Government employees all over the State, including teachers, affiliated to the umbrella trade union body, the JACTO-GEO (Joint Action Committee of Teachers Organisation – Government Employees Organisation), have been pressing for their charter of demands since the new government took charge, often threatening to go on an agitation.

Earlier, during the negotiations, former Finance Minister of the State Palanivel Thiagarajan had made it clear that there was no possibility for the revival of the old pension scheme. However after Thnagam Thennarasu became the Finance Minister he continued to give the government staff some hope, which had been now dashed, the employees feel.

On Thursday, the Tamil Nadu Government Employees Association with M Bhaskaran as president and M Srinivasan as general secretary, demanded the cancellation of the three-member committee and the implementation of the old pension scheme as promised in the election manifesto of the DMK.

While the government staff are putting pressure on the government with threats of protests and agitations, the opposition party leaders continued with their tirade over the various incidents of sexual assaults. Both the leader of the opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami, BJP State president K Annamalai and PMK founder S Ramadoss took to the social media channel X to say that the State had become unsafe for women.

The leaders recalled some old incidents of alleged sexual assaults and referred to the incidents in Manaparai, where a fourth class girl was reportedly abused, and in Vellore, where a pregnant woman was pushed out of train after she resisted the moves of an assailant.

The continuous onslaughts on the government from the opposition leaders and also the government staff associations have really put the government in a fix as they have just a year to go.