Retired bank employees in Kerala will hold a mass hunger strike on July 19 to press for revising their pension and welfare benefits which has been delayed for over a decade.
The hunger strike, organised by the Joint Forum of Bank Retirees–Kerala (JFBRK), will take place at four major centres, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode and Kasargod.
JFBRK is a coordination platform of three retiree organisations: the All India Bank Pensioners and Retirees Confederation (AIBPARC), the State Bank of India Pensioners Association (Kerala), and the All Kerala Bank Retirees Forum (AKBRF). Together, they claim to represent over 21,000 bank retirees in the state, cutting across public sector, private sector and regional rural banks.
AIBPARC had submitted its charter of demands to the Indian Banks Association (IBA) in 2012 during the 10th Bipartite Settlement, and again in 2017 during the 11th round. However, the issues were not resolved, except for being mentioned in a recorded note. The organisation also held multiple protests at national and state levels, including five dharnas at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
In 2017, AIBPARC national leaders had met officials from the Department of Financial Services (DFS) in Delhi. Although the IBA held a detailed meeting with retiree representatives following a direction from the finance minister, there has been no outcome so far, AIBPARC leaders say.
The primary demand remains the updation of pension for all retired bank employees. While the regulation mandates pension updation using a specified formula, the IBA argues that the formula was never defined in the relevant appendix, making implementation impossible. Retirees claim the responsibility for defining the formula lies with IBA and that the lack of it cannot be used as a legal excuse to deny the benefit.
Another major concern is the rising group medical insurance premium, which many retirees say has become unaffordable. The insurance scheme introduced in 2015 was intended to support both serving and retired employees, but retirees allege that IBA unilaterally imposed premium payments on them without government sanction. Retiree organisations now demand that banks bear the full cost of the premium, similar to what s done for working staff.
Another demand is the inclusion of special allowance in calculating superannuation benefits. Although the allowance attracts dearness allowance and is given to all employees irrespective of role, it does not count towards pension.
On the question of whether there are sufficient funds to implement pension updation, retirees have cited RTI-based data showing that the pension corpus of public sector banks grew by ₹1.07 lakh crore over five years, from ₹3.19 lakh crore in March 2019 to ₹4.27 lakh crore in March 2024. They argue that the annual cost of pension updation, pegged at ₹3,500 crore, is well within capacity.
Moreover, they note that no new bank employees have been covered under the pension scheme since March 31, 2010, and that the fund is primarily used for existing retirees. With fewer recruits entering the system and many retirees in their final phase of benefits, they speculate that a large portion of the corpus may remain unclaimed in future decades unless disbursal mechanisms are updated.