High Court slams Punjab for denying pension to employees

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, July 26

In a major embarrassment for the Punjab Government, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has criticised the state for focusing solely on extracting work from its craft teachers and gram sevikas without considering their post-retirement survival.

Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi reprimanded the State for denying pension benefits to employees who had served for more than two decades. The judge emphasised that, as a welfare State, the government should have come forward to their rescue “so that they could get pensionary benefits and live a dignified life after they attaining the age of superannuation”.

Justice Sethi also directed the State and other respondents to pas orders to regularise their services from the date of their superannuation and calculate and grant pensionary benefits under the old pension scheme, considering their length of service.

Justice Sethi asserted: “It is a sorry state of affairs that an employee was made to work for the State for more than two decades and now a plea is being taken that though work of the post on which the petitioners worked existed, the posts were not sanctioned…. Once, the respondents continued to take work from the petitioners for a period of more than two decades, it can’t be said that there was no work of the post in question so as to create a liability upon the State to create the post in the budgetary provisions.”

Justice Sethi added that the respondents were not denying that the petitioners were working for more than two decades. As per the Supreme Court’s judgment in Uma Devi’s case, an employee having 10 years of service was entitled to regularisation of services.

Besides this, the respondent-State had also issued instructions dated December 15, 2006, for regularisation of such employees. But the benefit was denied as the State in its wisdom decided not to create post to regularise their services

Justice Sethi further added: “The reason being given to deny the benefit of regularisation of service to the petitioners should not come from a model employer like State especially, qua the employees, who had served the State throughout their life and that too by teaching the students so that a generation can gain and lead better life.

Justice Sethi quoted another judgment where the Supreme Court granted the pensionary benefits to employees denied pensionary benefits as their services were never regularized even after rendering decades of services. “The petitioners are also entitled to the grant of benefit as they also belong to the same class,” the Bench asserted, adding that they would not be entitled to regular pay scale, but considered regular employee for pensionary benefits.