* CHRONICLE - PENSIONERS CONVERGE HERE, DISCUSS ISSUES OF THEIR CHOICE * CHRONICLE - WHERE EVEN THE CHAT COLUMN PRODUCES GREAT DISCUSSIONS * CHRONICLE - WHERE THE MUSIC IS RISING IN CRESCENDO !

               
                                   

Saturday, December 05, 2015

RIGHT TO PENSION IS NOW LEGALLY A PART OF HUMAN RIGHTS?


The Supreme Court in its judgment dt 14/8/2013 in CA No 6770/2013 in State of Jharkhand & Ors vs Jitendra Kumar Srivastava & Anr had held that Right to Pension was like right to property.

The Apex Court on Friday(4/12/2015) has held that Right to property is part of human rights.The news item that appeared in the Times of India today is reproduced below. Now reading both these verdicts in conjunction, it logically emerges that right to pension is legally a part of human rights.

The direct implication of these two Apex Court verdicts is that besides having recourse to the legal process for obtaining justice against discrimination in pension the Pensioners' Associations/ Federations can also move the National Human Rights Commission against LIC and Government of India for not upgrading the pension and not removing anomalies in pension of older pensioners with
more than 11000 pensioners having died without getting justice since the pension scheme was introduced in LIC...
Greetings.

C H Mahadevan

Click below to read the Judgment

Dec 05 2015 : The Times of India (Delhi)
Right to property is part of human rights: SC

AmitAnand Choudhary
New Delhi


The Supreme Court on Friday said that right to property was part of
human rights and landowners had a right to fair compensation for their
plots acquired by the government.

“The right to property having been elevated to the status of human
rights, it is inherent in every individual, and thus has to be
venerably acknowledged and can, by no means, be belittled or
trivialized by adopting an unconcerned and nonchalant disposition by
anyone, far less the State, after compulsorily acquiring his land by
invok ing an expropriatory legislative mechanism,“ a bench of Justices
V Gopala Gowda and Amitava Roy said.

The ruling in a case arising from the demand by a group of farmers in
Rajasthan for fair compensation against land acquired from them by the
government marks a step towards elevation of the right to property .
Recognized as a fundamental right by the framers of the Constitution,
right to property was done away with by the 44th amendment to the
Constitution in 1978, in what reflected the ethos which had reigned
supreme until the 1980s. Right to property is now recognised as a con
stitutional right by Article 300A, which provides that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law“.

The constitutional amendment only completed the process which began in the 1960s and which saw the government seeking to chip away at right to property for the professed objective of creation of an egalitarian society .

On Friday , however, the wheel of jurisprudence appeared to be coming
full circle when Supreme Court Justices V Gopala Gowda and Amitava Roy, while stressing the constitutional obligation of the government to
compensate landowners, called right to property a “prized privilege“.

The court said it was the government's constitutional obligation to
ensure that the landowner was adequately compensated. It said other
rights became illusory in the absence of right to property and the
state must ensure it was protected.

“Though earlier, human rights existed to the claim of individuals'
right to health, livelihood, shelter and employment etc, these have
started gaining a multifaceted approach, so much so that property
rights have become integrated within the definition of human rights,“
the bench said.

The bench pulled up Rajasthan government for not fulfilling its
promise of fair compensation to landowners whose properties were
acquired by the state in 2001. The state had assured landowners
allotment of 15% developed land near the acquired land but it resiled
from the promise and allotted them undeveloped land in a far off
place.