My response to ASR

MY RESPONSE TO Mr A S RAMANATHAN

I refer to the post of Mr Ramanathan. He is very right in referring to the following paragraph in the Explanatory Memorandum of LIC Pension Rules 1995:

"There has been persistent demand from the employees of the Corporation for introduction of a pension scheme in the Corporation. The Corporation in consultation with the Unions of the employees have recommended introduction of an index-linked pension scheme in lieu of Corporation's contribution to the Provident Fund with effect from 1st November, 1993."

 

Whatever grounds LIC  takes using the above paragraph  for denying  upgradation can be easily  demolished by  us  by compelling a reading of the above paragraph together with Rule 55 B and Rule 56.

If any Rule in the LIC Pension Rules 1995 is in inconsistent and blatant contradiction  of any other Rule of the same Scheme, the Rule to the detriment of even one pensioner governed by the Rules will violate Constitutional provisions resulting in discrimination.

I don't know how well we can relate the discovery of  'interstitium' to our  case  when even scientific validation of the said discovery is likely to take some time which our pensioners are too short of.

But the recent dictum of the Supreme Court to complete the trials in criminal cases in a time-frame, can indirectly be related to our civil pension case when we combine the litigation with the violation of human rights on which a wonderful booklet has been released by NHRC in 2014.I attach a copy of the same -even though it has been in circulation for over 3 years- which can be very well used by us to supplement our legal efforts.

To me it appears that an injustice at the hands of the State coupled with violation of human rights is as bad as- if not worse than- a criminal injustice. That is exactly what is experienced by the hapless pensioners of LIC who are septuagenarians and octogenarians and may be a handful of nonagenarians.

We all need to keep this in mind in our ongoing struggle.

Greetings.

C H Mahadevan

P S

There is a problem encountered by me in sending the attachment.I shall forward separately.

CHM