1. Differential treatment in fixing pension unfair ( Kalakurichi TQ Retired officers association VS State of TN Civil appeal NO 8853-8855of 2012
2. LIC held talks with various employees / officers association and had circulated agreed conclusions vide their letter dated 14-01-1994 that DA will be paid to the officers at the same formula as is applicable to employees but while notifying the pension regulations the rates were slashed to half without authority and arbitrarily3. Extract of Justice ( RETD ) VR Krishna Ayer’s letter dated 17-07-2010 addressed to Shri Pranab Mukherjee the then HON Minister for Finance :-
May I disclose to you the pathetic condition of a class of people arbitrarily alienated from the beneficial stream of pensioners in LIC.
What is arbitrary is unconstitutional as a constitution Bench has held in the Supreme Court in Maneka Gandhi’s case. ( Maneka Gandhi v Union of India AIR 1978 SC 597 ) The SC again in a weighty judgment observed that the date of variation cannot be the basis of differential pension (Vide Nakera V Union of India AIR (1983 SC 130: 1)
4. SEC 21 of LIC Act- A postmortem :-
CA before double Bench- Justice MaheshBagavathi Justice Dalip Singh :-
The Bench enquired from LIC counsel whether on the plea of the appellant LIC before the single judge that the aforesaid resolution of the BOARD requires the approval of the Central Government the Counsel appearing for
UOI submitted that the resolution dated 24-11-2001 is pending decision before GOI but LIC was otherwise free to take its own decision.” Thus there was no reason to seek approval because day to day decisions are not required to be sent to GOI for approval. The law in this regard is settled in view of various judgment cited by the petitioner’s counsel and even the counsel for UOI accepted and submitted that it is only policy decisions that too involving public interest needs to be referred to GOI and not every decision of the Board requires the approval of the Government. There is no element of public interest involved if the resolution of the Board is implemented.
On the contrary implementation of the Board resolution would take away the discriminatory treatment among the pensioners. The Board of LIC who is appellant before us has itself taken a decision to remove the discrepancies and discrimination with regard to payment of dearness allowance and pension to the retired employees under its resolution of the Board dated 24-11-2001.
This is only a meager attempt to bring in a capsule some important points which surfaced during the court proceedings. Let us hope that with so much of backing from court verdicts and so far justice being rightfully on our side we can look forward to a favorable verdict on 12 NOV
R.K. Viswanathan