The resolutions and the ‘action plan’ of the just-concluded Raipur AICC plenary session desisted from making any explicit policy commitment to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), despite all three Congress state governments announcing their return to OPS, something Congress also included in its in Himachal and Tripura manifestos.”Well, we felt the issue of OPS should be left to the state governments and the state Congress units and, therefore, there was no need to specifically mention the issue in the plenary resolutions which are more about national policies. In any case, our three state governments (in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Himachal) have already decided to revive the OPS and our poll-bound state party units’ election manifestos would promise it as per the need, as our party is committed to OPS,” said a member of the drafting committee (that framed the resolutions, including the one on economy) when asked about OPS finding no mention in the resolution.

Yet, the fact is, the resolutions and the action plan have also dealt with many state issues. The issue of reverting to OPS from the New Pension Scheme is not something that can be argued/categorised only as a “state issue” as NPS also covers both central and state government employees. Hence, any explicit commitment to OPS by resolutions/action plan, some party leaders feel, would have meant binding the party to a promise to revert the state government-central government employees across India to OPS and to its humongous economic ramifications, if and when the party is back to power.

Even as the action plan ducked specific mention of OPS, it highlighted some other policy decisions of Congress state governments. “Our governments in Chhattisgarh, Himachal and Rajasthan are models for the rest of the country. As just two examples, Rajasthan’s Mukhya Mantri Chiranjeevi Swasthya Bima Yojana and Chhattisgarh’s Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana have set the bar for other states. Our new government in Himachal Pradesh is fulfilling the promises made to the people in all earnestness,” it said.The omission of specific plenary commitment to OPS, something the Congress leaders treat as a vote-catching populist promise, is interesting given the differences within Congress about party state governments dumping the very same NPS, which is a reform legacy of the Manmohan Singh government (along with the Vajpayee regime, which had started it). It was during the Singh regime that the participation of the state governments was allowed in the NPS, which was originally meant for central government employees.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a leading light of Team Manmohan, recently termed the decision to revert to OPS “absurd” and “a recipe for financial bankruptcy”. One is yet to come across any public defence of OPS by Singh or the then FM P Chidambaram. Praveen Chakravarty, head of AICC data analytics, publically criticised the move.

After Congress governments returned to OPS, they are also facing questions about finding resources to fund it, an issue that now stands complicated after the Centre rejected their pitch to get the respective state governments’ employees’ contributions deposited with EPFO (since 2005) released as the law does not allow such ad hoc unlocking of the employees’ deposits for a state. FM Nirmala Sitharaman recently said: “If one state expects that the funds deposited with the EPFO should be given to states, if this is the expectation, then ‘no’. Employees have the entitlement to the money. The deposited money is earning interest and there should be clarity that the money comes into the hands (of the employees) post-retirement.”