'Will increase old age pension to ₹1k if voted to power in MP'

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath on Monday said his party would increase old age pension to Rs 1,000 per month if it came to power in the Assembly polls likely to be held at the end of next year.

He had earlier promised to bring back the old pension scheme (OPS) and farm loan waiver.

''We increased the old age pension from Rs 300 to Rs 600 and were going to take it further to Rs 1000. But our government was toppled through bargaining and the right of the elderly to get a pension of Rs 1000 per month was crushed,'' Nath tweeted.

''As soon as the Congress government is formed in Madhya Pradesh, we will increase the old age pension to Rs 1000 per month,'' he added.

On December 12, he said the Congress, if elected to power, will bring back OPS, which is a major demand of government employees. In MP, all government employees appointed on or after January 1, 2005 are covered under the new pension scheme (NPS).

On December 18, he had tweeted the party's farm loan waiver scheme, which was in force when he was chief minister between end 2018 and March 2020, will be reintroduced.

Brushing aside these announcements, state Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said Nath always ''backtracks'' from his promises.

The Nath government's promise of implementing farm loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh within ten days of coming to power was never fulfilled, and it had also not paid Rs 4,000 per month as unemployment allowance to the youth, Chaturvedi claimed.

''The Congress had also promised to decrease the rates of petrol and diesel by Rs five each but instead increased cess on fuel by 5 percent. People don't believe in such false promises,'' he added.

The Nath government, which came to power in the end of 2018, collapsed in March 2020 after several Congress MLAs loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia switched to the BJP.