DEAR ALL,
The Review Petition filed by us which
came up for hearing at the Delhi High Court on 1/9/2017 was disposed of by an
order dismissing our review application as withdrawn stating that our counsel
had made a statement that the grounds urged in the present review application
would be raised by way of additional grounds in the Special Leave Petition,
which has already been preferred. The Court has also
refrained from making any comments on the merits of our Review Petition. A copy
of the Delhi High Court Order is
attached(uploaded on this blog last evening).
This means that the DHC Order has
provided us an opportunity to have the grounds taken by us tested for
justification by the Supreme Court. This is an encouraging development having
the potential to strengthen our SLP.
For the information of our pensioner friends,
the grounds taken by us in our Review Petition are listed below:
1.
Misrepresentation by LIC of the
purported financial implications which was erroneous to mislead the Hon’ble
High Court.
All through the
proceedings, LIC had contended that upgradation of pension will entail huge
financial burden to LIC and will adversely affect the policyholders by reducing
their bonus. But the subsequent information that came to our knowledge through
the correspondence of Chairman & E D (Pers) of LIC between 2014 & 2017,
LIC had positively recommended allowing one more option for about 16500
employees who had not opted for pension stating that LIC’s financials were good
that would make this additional burden affordable. This clearly exposed the
hollowness of LIC’s claim of unaffordability for providing upgradation of
pension for existing pensioners many of whom are septuagenarians and
octogenarians.
2. The Hon’ble High Court’s observation that the Supreme Court
held the LIC Board Resolution as non est.
This was glaringly an
error of fact because the Supreme Court in its judgment had clearly held that
the Board Resolution was valid and even observed that the Government should have been gracious
enough to take a decision on the recommendations of the Board.
3.
Error apparent in not granting the partial
relief correctly in certain slabs of basic pension.
The High Court Bench
had erred in not following its on principle that the rate of DR should not be
less than that for the subsequent generation of retirees, e.g 0.23% wherever
the rate was less for retirees under
para 1 & para 2 of Annexure IV.While this was correctly followed in respect
of pensioners under para 2,in respect of pensioners under para 1,the rate for pensioners in the slab of 2000 to 2130
was not increased to 0.35% where it was allowed to remain at 0.33% as also the
in the sub-slab of 2131 to 2400 where it
was raised to 0.29% upto 3850.This was
inconsistent in respect of pensioners
with basic pension from 2000 to 2400 for
which the pensioners got a DR rate of 0.35%
under para 2.
While including this
ground in our SLP, we will of course take care to make it clear that this
prayer is without prejudice to our plea for upgradation of pension which if
allowed by the Supreme Court will have the effect of modifying the partial relief
in the event of upgradation of pension
with each wage revision from 1/8/1997 onwards.In this process, our prayer will
also be to modify the DHC order in its judgment dated 27/4/2017 that the
arrears will be payable from the date of the first Writ Petition filed( which
is 18/12/1998 for the Jaipur Writ Petition) and instead order LIC to make payment
of the arrears from 1/11/1993 or the date of retirement whichever
is later as the Delhi High Court by its order
had clearly recognized the existence of anomaly from 1/11/1993
or the date of retirement whichever was later.While on this we will also
need to pray before the Supreme Court in
our mention of additional grounds that
the rate of Dearness Relief if modified as per our prayer in the Review
Petition will be still much less than that as will be arrived at if
calculated as per the tapering Dearness Allowance formula
as applicable to in-service employees during the period upto 31/7/1997,
as from 1/8/1997 onwards with 100 % neutralization the rate of DA/DR was same for
in-service employees and retirees vide Central Government notification of
amendment in LIC Pension Rules 1995 by inserting para 3A in Appendix IV on 22/6/2000.We
will discuss with our counsel all the above aspects before filing the additional
grounds in our SLP
4.
One year time granted to LIC to
implement partial relief granted to pre-August
1997 category pensioners.
The period of 9 months
to determine the arrears payable and the time of one year granted for payment
of arrears without interest is too long a period considering that the
beneficiaries have already been identified while making payment of 40% interim
relief as per the Supreme Court Order dated 31/3/2016.With the DHC order
clearly spelling out the revised DR formula in its order dated 27/4/2017 and
the IT resources available at the disposal of LIC, a few weeks are sufficient
for making the payment of arrears to this group of pensioners.This is of course
subject to the changes that we will be praying for in our ground 3 above.
When these four grounds
are taken before the SC in our SLP, we are sure that they will add strength to
our SLP when it comes up for hearing on 13/10.2017.
We have at this
juncture to recall with gratitude the foresight, tenacity, commitment and
persistence with which late M Sreenivasa Murty laboured not only to prepare the
Review Petition, but also got it filed
with latest material available well before his unfortunate demise. I
wish to presently convey to the pensioners how Mr G K Viswanatham and I spent
long hours at his residence before aggregating the grounds for the review
petition.
But what is confounding
us is the huge cost of litigation staring at us to take us through for
succeeding in our case however strong it may be. Engaging a credible Senior
Counsel entails prohibitive cost where Rs 5 lks plus have to be paid for a
single appearance by the senior counsel. So we need liberal contributions
towards the legal fund on war footing. So, I once again appeal to all our
pensioner friends to send their contributions
at the earliest.
Let us hope for the
best in our ensuing legal struggle invoking the blessings of Almighty.
Greetings.
C H Mahadevan
Details of Bank Account
Account Name: Retired Class I Officers’ Association,
Hyderabad
S B A/c No: 053310100000317
Bank: Andhra Bank,Saifabad Branch,Hyderabad
IFSC No ANDB0000533
|
Cheques may be
drawn in favour of “RETIRED LIC CLASS I OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION, HYDERABAD”
and sent to Treasurer at the following address:
Shri Y V Subba Rao,
Block No 4, Flat No G1, Diamond Estates,
Ram Murty Nagar,CBCID Colony,
Hyder Nagar,
Hyderabad 500072
Mob No 9491124614
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