Employees and retired employees of Nabard observe one-day strike; seek pension updation

Kolkata: As many as six former heads of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) have sought Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's intervention on long-pending pension updation issue for retired employees of the bank.

Employees and retired employees of Nabard are observing a one-day strike today demanding revision of pension as well as an option to switch over from contributory provident fund to pension scheme.

The past chairmen and managing directors of the development financial institution wrote the letter a month back but there was no progress on the matter.


They said that Nabard has Rs 5750 crore in its pension fund as of March 2020 and sufficient surplus is generated every year from the returns on investment of pension funds.

Hence, Nabard does not require external support to revise pension, they argued. Past chairmen including Umesh Chandra Sarangi, YSP Thorat, Ranjana Kumari and P Kotaiah jointly signed the letter. Former managing directors MVS Chalapathi Rao and PVA Rama Rao also joined them.

Nabard employees have been agitating on these issues for the past couple of years.

Employees of Nabard, which was carved out of the Reserve Bank of India in 1982 to increase focus on farm credit, were earlier getting all benefits at par with RBI employees.

In the last couple of years RBI pension was updated while its employees also received a second option to switch over from CPF to pension schemes following a long wait. The Department of Financial Services, however, has not paid heed to Nabard employees' demand so far.