The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre to bring in an appropriate law to deal with the pension issues of a government employee after finding a "classic case" of a Railways staff who had to wait for 27 years to decide his post-retirement dues, "unfortunately not in his favour".
A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta quoted proceedings in the Privy Council more than 140 years ago, "These proceedings certainly illustrate what was said by Mr Doyne, and what has been often stated before, that the difficulties of a litigant in India begin when he has obtained a decree."
"A somewhat similar fate seems to await government servants - on getting retired, they have to struggle for the due pension. This is a classic case of a railway employee who retired as a train examiner on March 31, 1991. His pension woes are being decided after 27 years and unfortunately not in his favour," the bench said.
The court expressed its annoyance after noting that there was no comprehensive legislation to deal with the issue of pension of government employees and they have to suffer due to frequent amendments in rules, leading to confusion among authorities.
"We recommend to the Department of Personnel and Training of the Government of India to try and make life after retirement easier for a government servant by having appropriate legislation enacted by Parliament or applicable Pension Rules rather than a 'khichdi' (mixture) of instructions, office memoranda, clarifications, corrigenda and so on and so forth," the bench said.
The court passed its judgement on an appeal filed by the Union government against a Madras High Court judgement pertaining to the pension of R Sethumadhavan.
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