AIRIEF/Cir. No. 29

 Ref: AIRIEF/Cir. No. 29

To,

 

Date: 26th September 2025

 

All Members of AIRIEF through affiliated RIEA's/LlCPWA's & Units 

We have constantly been keeping you posted with authentic information about the developments in our Supreme Court case.

 In our last circular, we informed you that the case Was posted fir 24th September 2025. However, on that day, the number of miscellaneous cases was high and a few took up a lot of time of the bench. As the possibility of our case being taken up in the pre-lunch session started fäding, our Senior Counsel, Shri Nidhesh Gupta, urged the bench to allow him a few minutes to present the remaining part of his submissions, The Bench responded by saying that in a particular miscellaneous case, the hearing and the Order etc. were likely to take quite some time and that would hardly leave the bench enough time to hear all the petitioners' counsels on that day. Hence, the Hon. Judges preferred to hear the case the following day, i.e. on 25th September 2025. Since our Senior Advocate was to appear before a Constitutional Bench, he informed them that he would be able to continue placing his submissions in our case after 12.30 pm. Therefore, the Bench decided that our matter would be heard at 2.30 pm. As ill luck would have it, the Hon. Judges were to hear four matters in their Chamber at 1.30 p.m. Besides these rules Chamber matters, four miscellaneous matters, which could not be heard before lunch, were also due for hearing. All these matters took their toll on the time of the Bench. When Shri Nidhesh Gupta rose to conclude his submissions and requested the Hon Judges to allow him to begin they told him that, as they wanted to hear all the Counsels for the petitioners continuously, they would like to hear the case in the pre-lunch session on 8th October 2025 so that the arguments of all of them would be over in a day. After some discussions with the Counsels,they advised the Counsels, other than Shri Nidhesh Gupta, to cover only those points which have been left untouched by Shri Nidhesh Gupta. Finally, they allocated every Counsel of the Petitioners 45 minutes. The Counsel for LIC stood up to say that he was not available on 9th October, the day on which his turn for arguments would come and requested for an adjournment till 15th October. After some discussions, the Hon. Judges directed to list our case on 8th October as a "First Item". They assured that since the case is a part-heard one,they would like to complete the hearing as soon as possible.

 I feel that our efforts to fight this legal battle are amply rewarded when a Senior Officer of LIC, who retired in the cadre of Executive Directors, praises our efforts thus and I quote

"As I understand form our Legal team, so far major and exhaustive submissions have been made by the counsel of AIRIEF only and the Bench will take these submissions for consideration of the prayers. Other 4 petitioners are yet to contribute in the matter. They will get only 45 minutes each. It is easy to understand as to who is making the real efforts and who are trying to take the credit."

Friends, let us not look at these developments as a setback. Let us rather take solace in the fact that the Hon Judges are keen to hear our case continuously and conclude the case as early as possible,

I would not like to take a wild guess but the case would extend to at least another four hearings,thereby adversely impacting our finances. Hence, I would make a humble appeal to all those units, which are yet to contribute significantly to the Legal Fund, to mobilize their resources and to collect the Legal Fund and be proud to be a soldier in this battle, which we have valiantly been fighting.

With season's greetings, 

(RanJan Dey Sarkar)

General Secretary