Pension Issues

Under the leadership of Sri N. C. Jha, Ex-Chairman, CIL, CILREWA was constantly demanding urgent & seamless settlement & disbursement of Family Pension claims under CMPS’98. It was communicated that a revised Pension Payment Order (PPO) mentioning all necessary details of the Spouse, pension amount should be issued, this could enable immediate disbursement of family pension. Apart from regular correspondence, several meetings were held with Chairman, CIL & CMPF Commissioner to implement the issue. A CILREWA delegation consisting of Shri AK Debnath, Ex-CMD, CMPDIL and Shri TK Nag, Ex-CMD, NCL, Advisor and President of CILREWA, met the Commissioner of CMPF on 13th September 2022 (Annexure-A) to deliberate on this issue.

Subsequently, on 25.08.2023, the Commissioner of CMPF issued a letter for submission of certain documents of pensioners. On 04.09.2023, Director (P&IR), CIL responded to the letter, however, no development was evident till the end of December 2023. CILREWA deliberated on this issue with the Chairman, CIL, at the meeting held on 02.01.2024 (Annexure-B) and after consultation with the CMPF Commissioner, Chairman, CIL, decided on the submission of documents of pensioners as desired by the CMPFO. On 03.01.2024, a letter was issued by the Chairman on the subject to CMDs of all subsidiary companies (Annexure-C).

Subsequently, on 06.03.2024, a meeting was held with Chairman, CIL in presence of Director (P&IR), Director (Fin) & HOD (Welfare) and CILREWA team, wherein a decision was taken to convene a meeting of GM (Pension) of all subsidiary companies. On 22nd March 2024, Chairman, CIL, Director (P&IR) & Director (Finance) reviewed the status of submission of requisite documents to CMPFO for issuing Revised PPOs (Annexure-D). It was decided that CIL and subsidiaries would complete the process of providing requisite data to CMPFO within three months.

Determined persuasion of CILREWA resulted in a few Regional CMPF offices starting to issue revised PPOs at the beginning of the fiscal year, since May 2024, almost all CMPF offices started issuing revised PPOs.

Attachments

A. Letter of CILREWA to Commissioner, CMPFO dated 22.09.2022

B. Annexure to CMPFO letter dated 22.9.2022

C. Letter to Chairman, CIL dated 03.01.2024 page-1 & page-2

D. Letter to Subsidiary CMDs by Chairman dated 03.01.2024

E. MOM between Chairman, CIL and CILREWA held on 06.03.24

The sustained effort of CILREWA from its inception in 2016 led to the introduction of EDCPS, commonly named NPS, in 2019. Since remittance to the fund started accumulating from 1st January 2007, CILREWA, noted that, a substantial amount of interest had accrued. Factoring in the accrued interest, the corpus of each executive would increase substantially. The euphoria of launching NPS at the beginning of 2019 could not divert the focus of CILREWA from the accrued interest, a legitimate fund available for increasing the annuity. President, CILREWA in his letter dated 10th July 2019 to the Chairman, CIL thanked CIL Management for introducing NPS. The opportunity was also used to give a gentle reminder that the mission would be complete only if the accrued interest amount was also transferred to the Trust (Annexure-A). The matter was pursued with multiple meetings, followed up by three letters to the management of CIL during August-December 2019. Subsequently, in February 2020, CILREWA escalated the issue to Secretary MOC, Government of India, (Annexure-B). As the COVID pandemic situation started normalising, Shri NC Jha founder President of CILREWA appealed for the personal intervention of the Secretary, MOC, GOI to remove the obstacles coming in the way of adding the accrued interest in NPS contribution (Annexure-C). Subsequently, in a meeting with CIL Management held on 23rd November 2021, CILREWA was informed that the final clarifications sought by the Ministry of Coal had been provided with a request for approval of the proposal (Annexure-D). Finally, in August 2022, on receiving approval from MOC, Government of India, CIL issued the Circular ON TRANSFER OF COMPENSATORY INTEREST ON EDCPS FUND TO THE TRUST AND POLICY FOR FURTHER DISBURSEMENT (Annexure-E).

Annexures:

A. 10072019_CHMCIL_NPSINT&OTHR ISSUES

B. GOVT_17022020_SecyMOC_NPSINT

C. GOVT_19072021_SecyMOC_NPSINT

D. 30112021_DPCIL_Meeting_23112021

E. Circular_260822_oncompensatoryinterest

From the day of its registration, CILREWA took up the immediate payment /settlement of the additional retirement benefit of 9.84%. In the first meeting with CIL Management, CILREWA, amongst others, raised the settlement of an additional retirement benefit of 9.84% (Annexure 1). While negotiating the matter at the CIL level, CILREWA also escalated the matter at the level of the Secretary, Ministry of Coal (Annexure-2).

Simultaneously, a dedicated group was formed in CILREWA to discuss the issue of likely annual returns and taxation and the possibility of formulating a tailor-made scheme for retired executives of CIL. The inputs, thus collected, were shared with CIL officials, moreover, CILREWA demanded that multiple AMCs be engaged to find the best value of assets for the retired Executives (Annexure-3 & 4). On the insistence of CILREWA, a WINDOW was opened to facilitate submission of Form 10E so that work related to Income Tax (spread over of income for tax exemption) could be completed at the earliest and necessary action could be taken to transfer the fund for handling NPS.

Persistent follow-up with CIL and the Ministry of Coal finally resulted in the launching of the CIL Executive Defined Contribution Pension Scheme to be managed by four AMCs, viz. HDFC Life, LIC, SBI Life, and ICICI in August in the presence of the Secretary, MOC. Recognising the contribution of CILREWA, CIL Management felicitated Shri NC Jha, Shri Tapas Kumar Sinha, and Shri Umapada Bhowmik, President, Secretary and Group Lead of NPS issues in CILREWA, respectively. The then Honourable Secretary Shri Sumanta Chowdhury, IAS, Government of India, Ministry of Coal ceremonially presented the Annuity Certificates to them.

Annexures:

1. 16082017_CHMCIL_CILREWA1stMEETING

2. 28032018_SecyMOC_NPS

3. 01082018_CHMCIL_AMCOPTION

4. 27092018_CHMCIL_NPS Taxation & AMC