Discrimination between pre and post 2006 pensioners

Lt Col BR Malhotra (Retd) President, Welfare Association of Central Government Employees Absorbed in PSUs, is the author of this guest article.
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The discrimination between pre and post 2006 pensioners as regards minimum qualifying service of 20 years for full pension is another example of the total Non-Application of mind and deliberate violation of the Supreme Court Orders on the subject. It is now a well established principle of law that any classification in revised pension formula between pensioners on the basis of date of retirement is arbitrary and violates Article 14 of the Constitution. This has been fortified by a number of rulings of the Hon’ble Supreme Court starting with the judgment of a five judge bench in the case of D.S. Nakra vs. Union of India (AIR 1983 Supreme Court 130). The above principle has been clarified in the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s Judgement dated 09.10.98 in the case of V. Kasturi Vs MD, SBI in Civil Appeal No.5048 of 98. (1998(5) SCALE page 562) The operative paragraphs of the judgment are as follows: -

“20. It is now time for us to take stock of the situation. From the aforesaid resume of relevant decisions of this Court spread over years to which our attention was invited by learned counsel for the respective parties, the following legal position clearly gets projected.


Category –1


21. If the person retiring is eligible for pension at the time of his retirement and if he survives till the time by subsequent amendment of the relevant pension scheme, he would become eligible to get enhanced pension or would become eligible to get more pension as per the new formula of computation of pension subsequently brought into force, he would be entitled to get the benefit of the amended pension provision from the date of such order he would be a member of the very same class of pensioners when the additional benefit is being conferred on all of them. In such a situation the additional benefit available to the same class of pensioners cannot be denied to him on the ground that he had retired prior to the date on which the aforesaid additional benefit was conferred on all the members of the same class of pensioners who had survived by the time the scheme granting additional benefit to these pensioners came into force. The line of decisions tracing their roots to the ratio of Nakara’s case (supra) would cover this category of cases.”


A plain reading of the above judgment makes it abundantly clear that no discrimination can be made between post and pre 2006 pensioners who had rendered 20 years service at the time of retirement. A five judge bench in the case of D.S. Nakra vs. Union of India (AIR 1983 Supreme Court 130) had given its ruling on the subject. As per the Constitution of India all Supreme Court orders are binding on all authorities of the country

It is in-comprehensible that such an important ruling of the Apex court has been ignored. It is the duty of the senior most officers of the country to uphold the Constitution of India and rulings of the Supreme Court. As President of the Welfare Association of Central Government Employees absorbed in PSUs, I have sent representation to the Government but as usual ,they never reply when they are confronted with facts.
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VNatarajan, President, Pensioners' Forum,Chennai said on Thursday, March 18, 2010, 14:20

Dear Lt Col Malhotraji/all interested, The status of past pensioners have been reduced to such a state-that even a plethora of the legal conficts in the offing do not open the eyes of the concerned. At least a dozen are lined up from both Civil and Military pensioners. Affiliations/ Federations have no meaning. Nakar, Akkara etc have become deeply curied history and all past pensioners have become “bakras’. One sample of a RTI reply I received from the apex Public Authority dealing with CG pensions states:

“THERE IS NO PROVISION IN THE CCS(PENSION)RULES FOR REVISION OF PENSION OF PAST PENSIONERS ON THE BASIS OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF PAY COMMISSIONS. THEREFORE THERE IS NO QUESTION OF SUCH REVISION OF PENSION OF PAST PENSIONERS BEING IN CONFORMITY OR OTHERWISE OF CCS (PENSION) RULES”. How do you receive this?
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(source-Gconnect)