POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT NEEDS POSITIVE RESPONSE FROM LIC.
Referring to the post of Mr M V Venugopalan,I do not agree with his statement “------ while the arrears of difference in DR is easily quantifiable, the arrears arising out of difference in pension is not”.
Once the Jaipur Single Judge Bench order dated 12/1/2010 is correctly interpreted, there cannot be any difficulty for LIC for quantifying the arrears on removal of DR anomaly, 100% DR neutralisation and up- gradation of pension.
What may perhaps pose a minor difficulty will be the determination of the revised Basic Pension on up- gradation of pension on 1/8/1997,1/8/2002 and 1/8/2007 corresponding to the existing pension by preparing a fitment chart based on the statistical method of interpolation/extrapolation. With the computer software resources and expertise available with the L I C, it is not difficult for the Corporation to complete the exercise and make the payment of the court-ordered amount of 20% of arrears within 6 weeks to all the eligible pensioners. Of course the CO personnel experts and the IT software experts will need to sit together before deciding upon the algorithms required for the purpose keeping in mind the directions of the Jaipur Bench and Supreme Court.
It is worth recalling at this juncture that even while paying the deposits in the Jaipur Bench & Chandigarh HC Registries, LIC did not strictly adhere to the Jaipur Order dt 12/1/2010 allowing the first writ petition No 6676/1998 according to which the DR formula itself (from 1/8/1987 onwards) was required to be revised from the date of retirement or 1/11/1993 whichever was later, on par with that adopted for in-service employees. On the contrary LIC chose to adopt the more convenient option of simple merger of existing DR on the existing basic pension (without weightage) on 1/8/1997 and freezing such merged pension as basic pension without revising it upwards on1/8/2002 & 1/8/2007 ignoring the fact that the Jaipur Bench had also allowed the W.P. No 654/2007 ordering upgradation of pension. This approach adopted by LIC was clearly against the Jaipur Single Bench Order.
All that is required of the LIC/UOI is the willingness to implement the Supreme Court order in letter and spirit.
Having said this, let us await the written order of 7th May 2015 of the Supreme Court.
With greetings,
C H Mahadevan