THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The UDF Government stirred up a hornet’s nest on Monday as Finance Minister K M Mani declared a rollback on the pension age unification and raised the retirement age of government employees to 56 from 55. The controversial decision sparked off instant protest from Opposition benches within the Assembly and youth organisations of all hues in the streets in the capital and other parts of the state. Even the young Congress MLAs protested to the Chief Minister while Mani was going ahead with his speech. The entire Opposition MLAs were on their feet with the declaration and young members proceeded to the well of the House and held a sit-in shouting slogans and disrupting the budget speech many times. The mood of the business of the day took a sharp turn with the announcement on the contentious issue while the session was already vitiated over charges of leakage of the contents of the budget in a vernacular daily on Monday. The dilly-dallying of the Oommen Chandy Government on raising the pension age amid pulls and pressures for and against it ever since its assumption of office finally gave way to a concrete decision, only to hand out a political weapon in the hands of the Opposition.The Opposition protest in the House was led by MLAs T V Rajesh, P Sreeramakrishnan and R Rajesh (CPM), V S Sunil Kumar (CPI) and Kovoor Kunjumon (RSP). Only on a few occasions the UDF members could muster strength to shout down the Opposition.Mani and later Chandy tried to clarify that not even a single job will be lost through the ‘standardisation’ of the pension age.
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