Chandigarh, Nov 18 (IANS): Eyeing Gujarat elections, the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government on Friday approved the notification for implementing the old pension scheme (OPS) in Punjab, directly benefitting more than 1.75 lakh government employees.

A decision to this effect was taken in the meeting of the council of Ministers held under the leadership of the Chief Minister here.

Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson for the Chief Minister's Office said the government has approved the OPS for its employees currently covered under New Pension Scheme (NPS), fulfilling a long-pending demand of employees of the state.

This will directly benefit more than 1.75 lakh employees currently covered under NPS. In addition to this, 1.26 lakh employees are already covered under the existing OPS.

The scheme is aimed at safeguarding the future of government employees and recognising their contribution towards the state. In order to ensure that the scheme being introduced is financially sustainable for the exchequer in the future also, the government will be contributing proactively towards creation of a pension corpus which will service the pension in future to the beneficiaries of the scheme.

This contribution towards the pension corpus will be Rs 1,000 crore per annum initially and will gradually increase in future.

Besides, the current accumulated corpus with NPS is Rs 16,746 crore for which the state will request Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority of the government of India to refund this amount for effective utilisation at its end.