The budget for the financial year 2025-26 will be presented on February 1. Before that, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is holding meetings with representatives of various sectors. In this connection, a meeting was held with labor organizations on Monday.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the budget for the financial year 2025-26 on February 1. Before this, she is holding meetings with representatives of various sectors. In this connection, she held a meeting with labor unions on Monday. Labor organizations on Monday demanded five times the minimum pension under EPFO, immediate formation of the Eighth Pay Commission and higher taxes on the super rich in the budget for the financial year 2025-26.
In their traditional pre-budget meeting with Sitharaman, the trade union leaders also demanded raising the income tax exemption limit to Rs 10 lakh per annum, bringing in a social security scheme for temporary workers and restoring the old pension scheme (OPS) for government employees. SP Tiwari, national general secretary of the Trade Union Coordination Centre (TUCC), told reporters after the meeting that the government should stop the move to privatise public sector undertakings and impose an additional two per cent tax on the super-rich to raise social security funds for workers in the unorganised sector. He also demanded social security for workers employed in the agricultural sector and fixing their minimum wages.
EPFO Pension
Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh’s Organising Secretary (Northern Region) Pawan Kumar said that the minimum pension payable under the Employees’ Pension Scheme, 1995 (EPS-95) should first be increased from Rs 1,000 per month to Rs 5,000 per month and then VDA (variable dearness allowance) should also be added to it. He also suggested that the income tax exemption limit should be increased to Rs 10 lakh. Along with this, he also demanded from the government to exempt the income from pension from tax. Kumar also said that the Eighth Pay Commission should be constituted immediately to revise the salary structure of government employees.
Swadesh Dev Roy, national secretary of the trade union Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), supported the demand and said that more than 10 years have passed since the formation of the Seventh Pay Commission in February 2014. Dev Roy expressed concern over the sharp decline in the number of permanent employees in the central public sector undertakings. He said that in the 1980s, there were 21 lakh permanent employees in these undertakings, but in 2023-24 this number would have come down to a little more than eight lakh.
Separate budget allocation
National Front of Indian Trade Union (NFITU) national president Deepak Jaiswal demanded separate budget allocation for Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) to provide social security benefits to unorganised sector workers.
