New Delhi: On Congress's description of the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) as a U-turn and rollback by the government, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday that it is not a U-turn or rollback in any way.

U-turn means coming back to the old situation whereas UPS is different from National Pension System (NPS) and Old Pension Scheme (OPS). It is not OPS 2.0. UPS has been prepared keeping in mind the challenges of OPS and taking some lessons from NPS. It cannot be called a U-turn from any angle.

Indexation continues regarding property tax in the budget

On the label of U-turn government by Congress, the Finance Minister said that earlier there were leaders with administrative experience in Congress, so when they spoke, people used to listen. Now there is no such leader left and no one listens to what they say, so they raise slogans.

He said that Congress has now become a party run by slogans. Regarding the withdrawal of the Broadcast Bill, he said that if the bill is withdrawn for better discussion, then since when has it become a U-turn. The Finance Minister also said that according to me UPS is better for employees than NPS.

On the withdrawal of indexation of property tax in the budget, he said that we want reforms in the capital market, hence we had introduced a new formula.

There is no compulsion on the states to implement UPS

The Finance Minister said that there is no compulsion on the states to implement UPS. We are not going to give any incentive to the states for implementing UPS. Every state will take its own decision and it will completely depend on them. The Center will not go and ask them to implement it.

On 24th August, the cabinet approved UPS which will be implemented from April next year. Under this, 50 percent of the average salary of the last year will be fixed as pension for the employee. The previous government of Himachal, Punjab, Congress-ruled Rajasthan had announced to implement OPS in place of NPS.

According to Finance Ministry sources, before implementing UPS, the committee related to the matter held discussions with all the states. More than 25 meetings were held. TV Somanathan, Finance Secretary and who is going to take over as Cabinet Secretary after three days, was the chairman of the committee.