Govt defends changes in pension rules, says it is done to prevent "loss to country"

The recent changes in the pension rules have been made to prevent a "loss to the country" in case prohibited material gets published by retired government officers, the Personnel Ministry told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

The amended pension rules, notified by the Personnel Ministry in May this year, make it mandatory for retired government servants who have worked in select intelligence or security-related organizations to take prior clearance from the head of the organisation if they wish to make any publication.

"Prior to amendment, it was up to the official concerned to decide whether the published material falls in the prescribed prohibited categories or not," Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh said in a written reply.

In case, the official feels that the material he is going to publish does not fall in the prohibited category then he could publish the material without any prior approval of the government, he said.

"Later on, in case government comes to a conclusion that the published material comes/falls under the category of prohibited material, a loss to the country would have already happened. To prevent such situations, the current amendment has been made," the minister said.

The government was asked to give a detailed rationale behind taking such a decision (bringing in changes in the pension rules).

Singh said the stakeholders were consulted while amending Rule 8 of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Amendment Rules, 2021.

"The condition of good conduct already exists in the CCS (Pension) Rules," he said, in response to the question "whether the Ministry has consulted different stakeholders while bringing in the Central Civil Services (Pension) Amendment Rules, 2020 through which a condition of "good conduct" has been added in Rule 8 prohibiting the retired officers from writing about their department?"