Point of No return

Mr M V Venugopalan has reflected on the ground realities on the manner in which the three cases are handled in the Supreme Court with no unity of purpose.We have to accept it as a fact  of organisational life of the pensioners' fraternity.But we can ,in my opinion, have faith in the judiciary to arrive at an objective decision irrespective of the notes of discord wherever they arise  among the three sets of respondents, purely  based on points of law.

As regards his remarks on the sketchiness of both the Board Resolution and the Justice Bhandari judgment,my reading and re-reading of  both the documents leads me to conclude that there is no need to have an iota of doubt that both provide for upgradation of pension.

The Board note uses the word"upgradation of pension  with 11.25% weightage as provided for in service employees".

The pages 9 to 18 of the Jaipur judgment deal with not only the dearness relief anomaly,but also the discrimination  in regard to."dearness allowance or other benefits"(page18).

The last sentence of the operative part of the judgment clearly states that there cannot be discrimination while stating ."......so that every retired employee may get the same benefit"

The D S Nakara judgment has also come up for considerable length of discussion which would not have been necessary if only DR anomaly was to be ordered to be removed.A mere  consideration of Art 14 & 16 of the Constitution would have sufficed.Of course these two Articles are  very much relevant for upgradation of pension also.

LIC  was in a mood to address the issue of DR anomaly while wage revisions w.e.f 1/8/2007 were to be finalised in 2010.But the moment the Jaipur judgment was delivered, LIC  put the DR anomaly removal in cold storage because LIC knew very well that the judgment covered upgradation also and decided to appeal. Rest is. history.If LIC believed that Jaipur judgment covered only DR anomaly, they would have very happily implemented the judgment and we could all have forgotten about any possibility of getting upgraded pension for  ever.

Now at least there is a ray of hope for a possible redress  in the Supreme Court.

Let us hope for the best in the meantime.

I attach the copy of the Jaipur judgment for ready reference in case  the readers may like to gain fresh insights by reading it again(It may already be in the archives,but still I thought it will be useful for ready reference).

Greetings.

C H Mahadevn

         JAIPUR SB JUDGMENT DATED 12.01.2010 CLICK HERE