Golden handshake for Congress staff

Congress offers VRS to all its regular staff.

To make the Party a leaner meaner fighting machine, the Congress has offered a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to all its regular employees who have served at least five years at its headquarters.

The Congress has around 170 employees, of whom only about seven to eight are temporary and a handful are contractual. The party has a wage bill of around Rs 8 lakh per month. At that kind of a salary, those who work for the party are obviously not there for the money. The perks and fringe benefits of working in such close proximity with professional politicans are obvious.

There was understandably some bitterness about the notice pasted in the 'administrative block'. "The AICC has decided to offer the scheme to all regular employees....The objective of the VRS is to provide an opportunity to the employees to opt for early retirement, in case they so desire," says a circular issued after a meeting of party general secretaries last month that discussed ways to make the party organisation more responsive to a new era of politics ruled by e mails and mobile phones.

The circular says the number of employees in the AICC is "surplus/more than they are actually required....The object of the VRS is to downsize the strength of employees so that it may enable the AICC to enhance efficiency in its operations", it said. Employees have every right to accept or reject the proposal "without assigning any reason," it said.

The scheme closes on November 9. The package offers all statutory dues, 15-days salary multiplied by the remaining years of service, which would be released within 15-days of the closure of the VRS scheme.

Two earlier attempts were made to inject some order in the functioning of the AICC. In 1992, the RD Pradhan commitee made retirement at 65 mandatory. And in 1980, Vasantdada Patil issued a terse typewritten order informing about 20 people that they would be retrenched. Indira Gandhi took one look at it and flung it away.