Thiruvananthapuram, January 5:
The
Forum of Retired Employees of RBI, Chennai, has requested Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley to grant final approval for implementation of
pension updation in the apex bank.
Several
judgments from the Supreme Court — beginning with the Nakara case —
have recognised that wage and pension revisions are inseparable from
each other, the forum contended.
Nakara case
The
Nakara case of 1982 is considered a landmark in the history of pension
rights. Earlier too, another Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had
declared pension a ‘basic right’ of pensioners. But in RBI, the pension
updation, following wage revisions in 2002 and 2007, has remained
unresolved.
This is even as talks for wage revision in 2012 are reportedly in the pipeline.
The
apex bank is still awaiting final approval from the Ministry of
Finance, C Rajagopalan, a retired assistant general manager and
president of the Forum, said.
The
RBI central board is empowered to grant updation in terms of Regulation
5 of the Pension Fund Regulation, 1990, read with Sec 58(2) (j) of the
RBI Act, 1934.
Therefore, the bank’s reference to the Centre for approval is unfortunate, pensioners feel.
Own corpus
In contrast, the RBI has its own corpus aggregating Rs. 10,782 crore (as on June 30, 2014), which includes pension updation benefits, Rajagopalan pointed out.
This apart, progressive increase in transfer of working surplus of Rs. 65,896 crore (2014-15) is unprecedented and is unmatched in any public sector institution or the corporate sector.
In
view of this, the Finance Minister should convey final approval for
pension updation for immediate implementation and with retrospective
effect, Rajagopalan said.
(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated January 6, 2016
Regards,
E.R.Iyer
