My response to the post of Mr S R Srinivasan -LIC has violated DHC directions

 Referring to the above post , I do not agree with Mr S R Srinivasan  that there has been no violation of the directions of the Delhi High Court judgment dated 27/4/2017.

According to me there are violations  by LIC of the directions of the DHC on two counts.One has been mentioned by Mr S R Srinivasan where he does not find violation by LIC.

Let me deal with these one by one.

The paragraph 108 of the DHC judgment reads as follows:

"We would also clarify that payment made in terms of interim directions 

issued by the Supreme Court would not be refunded or returned to the 

Corporation. We have issued the said direction as the amount paid is 

not substantial for the Corporation, whereas asking the retired 

employees/pensioners to refund the amount would put them in a grave 

financial difficulty".

The " adjustment" of the 40% IR out of the DR arrears to eligible pensioners is an act  of recovery of the 40% IR by LIC ,but the consequence of such adjustment is refund of the interim relief by the pensioner to the Corporation having been compelled without obtaining his or  her consent.This is clearly against the above direction by the Delhi Court and constitutes contempt of DHC order.

The second violation arose as a result of  LIC not following the direction of the Delhi High Court as stated in para 107(iii)(c) of the same judgment:

"Similarly, dearness relief @ 0.17% of basic pension in paragraph 1 shall stand enhanced to 0.29% for amounts between Rs.2130/- to Rs.3850/-, the rate stipulated in paragraph 2".

While implementing the judgment of the DHC, the revised DR and arrears of DR were correctly calculated and paid to paragraph 2 pensioners, but while calculating DR  and arrears for para 1 pensioners with basic pension 2131 to 3850( the maximum basic pension of an Executive Director was 3500), the rate of DR for the pension slab above 2130 was taken as 0.23% by LIC instead of 0.29% as ordered in the above para by the Delhi High Court judgment. This violation has caused tremendous financial loss for para 1 pensioners drawing more than Rs 2130 as basic pension.

These are the two violations by LIC of the orders in theDHC judgment dated 27/4/2017.

There were about 15900 pensioners who were paid 40% IR by LIC.But arising out of change in the DR formula by the above judgment, only 3600  plus pensioners received DR arrears after deduction of the 40% IR paid to them.Only about 23% of the pensioners who got 40% IR received DR arrears  & revised DR as a result of DHC judgment.But 77% of those -mostly belonging to Class II,III & IV cadres-who received interim relief did not get any revision of DR and any arrears of DR.Presumably  LIC has not demanded repayment of the 40% IR received by them in 2016.By recovering the interim relief from DR arrears from the 23% pensioners while not demanding repayment from 77% pensioners as the latter did not receive arrears, LIC has discriminated against those who were paid DR arrears vis-a -vis the larger number of pensioners from whom the interim relief was not recovered or even demanded.This is a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution besides constituting contempt of court.

I am sure that pensioners at large and legally qualified persons among our pensioners in particular  will agree with me.Otherwise I would like to be enlightened  on the right legal position.

C H Mahadevan