Maharashtra Government’s counterstroke to the employee strike for restoration of OPS

Karma Global Rebuilds Compliances For Businesses With Robust Integration As Cost Of Non-Compliances Could Be More Than Cost Of Compliances

Karma Global one of the top 5 labour law consulting firms in the country, has recently hit upon yet another significant milestone in the journey of tying up with SUNDEEP PURI ASSOCIATES AND ADVOCATE, where both these Firms have formally joined hands together to collaborate and create a bigger alliance by scaling up its business on Pan India basis and Internationally to give greater reach of its services together, to its hundreds of clients all over. The pandemic has changed the very way we do business, disrupting everything from global supply chains to financial markets which subsequently paved the way for change, new adaptations, and rebuilding of business models with compliance being at the heart of this change. In this context, the Enterprises too need a change in mindset for those who want to remain on the right side of the law. “If the government can change, Corporate and Corporations need to be faster than the regulatory authorities in changing their mindset in this automation game. Only a few years back, we had compliance people to check and update on compliance conforming to the prevailing laws but now the nature of work is changing and we have platforms that put all the dates, and laws in the form of a checklist for us, which comes as a lifesaver," At present, not all but most of the companies have woken up to the reality of this changing compliance landscape with the announcement of the new labour codes, and with it, there is a growing trend towards digitization to improve compliance and ensure that organizations are saved from the stiff penalties imposed on defaulters. “Every other day you have a different regulation change happening across numerous States, recent example with Chhattisgarh going in for old pensions while other States are opting for new pensions. We have many vendors who are going towards digitalization to track these compliance and regulation changes," and Karma Global is proud to have adopted the new AI technology and automation much before others could even think about it. With the changing notifications from the government, and the requirement of reporting real-time data to authorities on a month/quarterly/half yearly, and annual basis, it is a technology that has set new standards and disrupted traditional methods and practices. An increasing number of companies today are using a mix of internal and externally developed technology tools to keep pace with the fast-changing compliance landscape and are standing with Karma Global for its state-of-the-art “Weprocess” and “Wechecked” tools that offer advanced features, chatbots, machine learning, single uploading of all documents, and final evaluation together with remediation of noncompliance. “The compliance scenario in India has gone so far that everything is interconnected. One failure somewhere is going to reflect in many records. We see the government rolling things out step by step to make sure that they have a more robust compliance mechanism and a compliance-driven economy. So in this regard, besides the business profile of Karma Global relating to labour laws, it will now focus whole time also on legal and paralegal issues and matters with the collaboration of Sundeep Puri & Associates who are already into legal matters such as disputes, litigation, and court cases.

Maharashtra Government’s counterstroke to the employee strike for restoration of OPS!

What is Old Pension Scheme: Old Pension Scheme (OPS) is a retirement scheme approved by the central government which provides a monthly pension to the beneficiaries till the end of their life service. Under this, the amount of monthly pension is equal to half of the last salary drawn by an individual. What is New Pension Scheme: New Pension Scheme (NPS) creates market-linked returns without any guarantee of returns...

What is the difference between the Old and New Pension Schemes:

New Pension Scheme	Old Pension Scheme
Old Pension Scheme (OPS) provides return certainty by basing the monthly pension on the last wage received by the employee.	New Pension Scheme (NPS) creates market-linked returns without any guarantee of returns.
Old Pension Scheme (OPS) income is not subject to the taxation system.	The New Pension Scheme (NPS) gives a retirement pension fund that is 60% tax-free upon redemption while the remaining is 40%, which has to be invested in annuities that are 100% taxable.
Old Pension Scheme may be able to force governments to reevaluate their economic objectives	New Pension Scheme was designed to relieve this necessity of economic objectives
Monthly payment under OPS 1s made that 1s equivalent to 50% of the last salary drawn.	Employees that participate in New Pension Scheme pay a monthly amount equal to 10% of their salaries

What is the current issue all about? According to a news report, in a move that is viewed as a counterstroke to the employee strike, the state government has issued a directive appointing nine private agencies to fill vacant government and semi-governmental posts on a contractual basis. The Government Resolution (GR) issued by the State Industries and Labour Ministry to privatize skilled and unskilled labour supply to all Government Departments has come under attack from the opposition. In the Upper House, the Opposition created a ruckus demanding special attention. The selection of agencies was cleared by the State Cabinet on March 8, 2023.3.23 The 9 HR Agencies will supply staff on 74 different categories of posts over the next 5 years. The post such as Project Officers, Project Consultants, Senior and Junior Engineers, Auditors, District Coordinators, Law Officers, Superintendents, and Teachers would be filled up through them. Even the local self-Government Bodies and various Boards and Corporations of the Government will recruit semi-skilled and unskilled staff through them. The salaries of these employees will be revised every year and released through the agencies which selected them. The Opposition said that the use of contractual manpower was sent against the State’s ongoing drive to recruit 75,000 Government Posts. It also said that filling Government Posts with contractual workers will also compromise Government’s secrecy. CONCLUSION - What Central Bank says ……... According to the central bank, OPS increased the government's liability. In short, the OPS puts the burden of employees' pensions on the states, risking their financial security. Whereas, returns in the new pension system are market-linked, and involves contribution from both employers and employees. The issue of the old pension scheme (OPS) versus the new pension scheme (NPS) has again dominated the news with the Reserve Bank of India cautioning states against switching back to the old scheme, saying it represents a big financial risk. The OPS, under which the entire pension amount was given by the government, was discontinued by the National Democratic Alliance government in 2003 from April 1, 2004. However, the military, i.e. Army, Navy, and Air Force was excluded from the new pension scheme. Karma Global works across a wide variety of industries, constantly looking for ways to offer new services and increase its global businesses. In order to serve today’s technology to tech-savvy clients and employees, Karma Global planned much ahead of its time by adapting to processes and systems to accommodate the quickly changing markets. As the Industry is continuing to get more and more competitive, Karma Global is bridging the gap, setting itself in tune with the latest technology trends in order to maintain a competitive advantage for all of its over 400 domestic and global clients. Automation and AI - Karma Global was among the first to improve efficiencies, the first in the vendor auditing process to fully automate and streamline any and all processes surrounding the auditing business of entities and vendors. The chatbot and AI did a fabulous job of giving machine output, with a quicker pace, cheaper rate, and more accurate level of auditing and reporting. This helped in elevating the roles of our Auditors to focus on complex tasks that require more brainpower or the human touch, leaving some of its tasks to the capabilities of the machine. Incorporating chatbots in customer service allowed time for our expert representatives to spend time dealing with more complex issues which could ultimately add to the user experience and this is what set us apart from others. Automating repetitive processes in our systems helped us free the valuable time of our expert staff allowing them to reach out to more clients. For this purpose, Karma Global has both full-time IT related to the staff and also indirect staff who are freelancing with us for enhancing our IT capabilities to the next level on the cloud platform. Also, clients with issues such as litigation, disputes, closure, lockdown, retrenchment, and layoffs could take the help of Karma Global in sorting this out since it now has a formidable partner by the name of Sundeep Puri & Associates to provide further solutions on such or any legal entanglements.

Proprietary blog of Karma Global Tech Management LLC

This blog has been collated and compiled by the internal staff of Karma Global with the knowledge and expertise that they possess, besides adaptation, illustration, derivation, transformation, the collection as well as auto-generation from various sources, for its monthly newsletter Issue 10 of April 2023 and in case of specific or general information or compliance updates for that matter, kindly reach out to the Marketing Team – Kush@karmamgmt.com / yashika@karmamgmt.com

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