RK VISWANATHAN

dusty archives...
searching for national litigation policy?

The judgment of five Judge Supreme Court Bench presided over by CJ Lodha which dismissed the curative petition by UOI and spelling out in clear terms that full DR should be restored for Central Government employees retrospectively from 1-8-1997 (ie from the date of eligibility) and also that pension revision should be effective from the date of every successive wage revision is a bolt from the blue  for UOI but would fortify and  add spice to Asthana’s Civil appeal 8959/8962/2013 ( LIC vs Asthana ) coming to the SC bench on 12-8-2014.

This is yet another land mark judgment coming very handy to us which could be made full use of when the above Civil appeal is heard. When there is nothing left in the kettle, the UOI is trying to scratch from the bottom in order to wriggle out of the nasty corner they are pushed hitherto. These developments go to show that there is a silver lining in the pensioner’s horizon and therefore one has to bear the delay with patience.

Now that a change in the Government is inevitable and the UPA government will be shown their disgraceful exit the new Government whoever comes would try to undo any act their predecessor has done which does not justify such action as in the case of LIC pensioners in order to gain popularity and we should cash on this with parleys with the Ministry of Finance. It should be brought to their notice the unethical way the previous Government was  handling the present LIC pensioners problem, the various court cases they lost but yet wanted to drag on to harass the pensioners. In particular it should be brought to their notice ‘The National Litigation policy ‘ which is gathering dust in the Government archives.