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DEAR ALL,
The
Review Petition filed by us which came up for hearing at the Delhi High
Court on 1/9/2017 was disposed of by an order dismissing our review
application as withdrawn stating that our counsel had made a statement
that the grounds urged in the present review application would be raised
by way of additional grounds in the Special Leave Petition, which has
already been preferred.
The Court has also refrained from making any comments on the merits of
our Review Petition. A copy of the Delhi High Court Order is attached.
This
means that the DHC Order has provided us an opportunity to have the
grounds taken by us tested for justification by the Supreme Court. This
is an encouraging development having the potential to strengthen our
SLP.
For the information of our pensioner friends, the grounds taken by us in our Review Petition are listed below:
1. Misrepresentation by LIC of the purported financial implications which was erroneous to mislead the Hon’ble High Court.
All
through the proceedings, LIC had contended that upgradation of pension
will entail huge financial burden to LIC and will adversely affect the
policyholders by reducing their bonus. But the subsequent information
that came to our knowledge through the correspondence of Chairman & E
D (Pers) of LIC between 2014 & 2017, LIC had positively recommended
allowing one more option for about 16500 employees who had not opted
for pension stating that LIC’s financials were good that would make this
additional burden affordable. This clearly exposed the hollowness of
LIC’s claim of unaffordability for providing upgradation of pension for
existing pensioners many of whom are septuagenarians and octogenarians.
2. The Hon’ble High Court’s observation that the Supreme Court held the LIC Board Resolution as non est.
This
was glaringly an error of fact because the Supreme Court in its
judgment had clearly held that the Board Resolution was valid and even
observed that the Government should have been gracious enough to take a
decision on the recommendations of the Board.
3. Error apparent in not granting the partial relief correctly in certain slabs of basic pension.
The
High Court Bench had erred in not following its on principle that the
rate of DR should not be less than that for the subsequent generation of
retirees, e.g 0.23% wherever the rate was less for retirees under para
1 & para 2 of Annexure IV.While this was correctly followed in
respect of pensioners under para 2,in respect of pensioners under para
1,the rate for pensioners in the slab of 2000 to 2130 was not increased
to 0.35% where it was allowed to remain at 0.33% as also the in the
sub-slab of 2131 to 2400 where it was raised to 0.29% upto 3850.This
was inconsistent in respect of pensioners with basic pension from 2000
to 2400 for which the pensioners got a DR rate of 0.35% under para 2.
While
including this ground in our SLP, we will of course take care to make
it clear that this prayer is without prejudice to our plea for
upgradation of pension which if allowed by the Supreme Court will have
the effect of modifying the partial relief in the event of upgradation
of pension with each wage revision from 1/8/1997 onwards.In this
process, our prayer will also be to modify the DHC order in its judgment
dated 27/4/2017 that the arrears will be payable from the date of the
first Writ Petition filed( which is 18/12/1998 for the Jaipur Writ
Petition) and instead order LIC to make payment of the arrears from
1/11/1993 or the date of retirement whichever is later as the Delhi
High Court by its order had clearly recognized the existence of
anomaly from 1/11/1993 or the date of retirement whichever was
later.While on this we will also need to pray before the Supreme Court
in our mention of additional grounds that the rate of Dearness Relief
if modified as per our prayer in the Review Petition will be still much
less than that as will be arrived at if calculated as per the tapering
Dearness Allowance formula as applicable to in-service employees
during the period upto 31/7/1997, as from 1/8/1997 onwards with 100 %
neutralization the rate of DA/DR was same for in-service employees and
retirees vide Central Government notification of amendment in LIC
Pension Rules 1995 by inserting para 3A in Appendix IV on 22/6/2000.We
will discuss with our counsel all the above aspects before filing the
additional grounds in our SLP
4. One year time granted to LIC to implement partial relief granted to pre-August 1997 category pensioners.
The
period of 9 months to determine the arrears payable and the time of one
year granted for payment of arrears without interest is too long a
period considering that the beneficiaries have already been identified
while making payment of 40% interim relief as per the Supreme Court
Order dated 31/3/2016.With the DHC order clearly spelling out the
revised DR formula in its order dated 27/4/2017 and the IT resources
available at the disposal of LIC, a few weeks are sufficient for making
the payment of arrears to this group of pensioners.This is of course
subject to the changes that we will be praying for in our ground 3
above.
When
these four grounds are taken before the SC in our SLP, we are sure that
they will add strength to our SLP when it comes up for hearing on
13/10.2017.
We
have at this juncture to recall with gratitude the foresight, tenacity,
commitment and persistence with which late M Sreenivasa Murty laboured
not only to prepare the Review Petition, but also got it filed with
latest material available well before his unfortunate demise. I wish to
presently convey to the pensioners how Mr G K Viswanatham and I spent
long hours at his residence before aggregating the grounds for the
review petition.
But
what is confounding us is the huge cost of litigation staring at us to
take us through for succeeding in our case however strong it may be.
Engaging a credible Senior Counsel entails prohibitive cost where Rs 5
lks plus have to be paid for a single appearance by the senior counsel.
So we need liberal contributions towards the legal fund on war footing.
So, I once again appeal to all our pensioner friends to send their
contributions at the earliest.
Let us hope for the best in our ensuing legal struggle invoking the blessings of Almighty.
Greetings.
C H Mahadevan
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Details of Bank Account
Cheques
may be drawn in favour of “RETIRED LIC CLASS I OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION,
HYDERABAD” and sent to Treasurer at the following address:
Shri Y V Subba Rao,
Block No 4, Flat No G1, Diamond Estates,
Ram Murty Nagar,CBCID Colony,
Hyder Nagar,
Hyderabad 500072
Mob No 9491124614
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