Pawan Khera: BJP punishing Himachal's Congress Govt for restoring old pension scheme

Dharamsala, July 3

Congress national spokesperson Pawan Khera today said that the BJP was punishing the Congress government for restoring the old pension scheme (OPS) for its employees in the state.

Khera, while addressing a press conference in Dharamsala, alleged that whenever the state government reached out to the Union Government to seek its rights in the form of its share of taxes, the grants were denied due to the OPS restoration.

He said that the state was not given its due after last year’s monsoon disaster. “The state has been forced to undergo byelections as the BJP has been making efforts to topple the democratically-elected government in the state. This has burdened the state ex-chequer,” he said.

Khera said the party was evaluating reasons for its defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in Himachal. Asked about Shanta Kumar’s criticism of the Congress for fielding Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife in the Dehra byelection, Khera said that he respected the former Union Minister and his target was someone else, not the Congress.