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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Two updates: (1) Supreme Court reiterates- No discrimination based on cut-off dates while liberalizing existing pensionary benefits (2) MoD’s letter on pension revision is under issuance


(1)
In its latest decision titled AN Sachdeva Vs MDU, Rohtak, the Supreme Court has once again reiterated that cut-off dates cannot come in the way of upward liberalization of pensionary benefits. The Apex Court, after going into the length and breadth of the issue and all past decisions on the subject, has again come to the conclusion that retirees retiring prior to the cut-off date of liberalization of a pensionary scheme would also be entitled to the said benefits with monetary benefits from the said cut-off date which happened to be 2001 in this case.

The said issue had been decided by the Punjab & Haryana High Court against pensioners of the Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, but the Supreme Court has overturned the decision of the High Court.

The decision can be accessed by clicking here.


(2)
Chain mails are floating referring to a circular issued by the PCDA(P) stating that the MoD has issued orders concerning the implementation of the decision of the Supreme Court regarding grant of arrears from 01-01-2006 rather than 24-09-2012. The news is incorrect. The said circular only concerns defence civilian pensioners based on the letter issued for civilian pensioners by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’’ Welfare (DoPPW). It may kindly be understood that the PCDA(P) has no authority to issue circulars on its own till the time the MoD issues a Government letter to the said effect. However, the good news is that the MoD is also working on the same and the letter should be out soon. Some added time after the issuance of the DoPPW letter was expected to be taken by the MoD since there are certain additional issues to be addressed by the MoD over and above the ones in the DoPPW letter and a mutatis-mutandis letter could not have been issued. For example, the MoD is to add the Military Service Pay (MSP) also in addition to the elements in the civil letter and then unlike civil pensioners, separate tables would have to be ultimately prepared by the Defence Accounts Department for various ranks and different categories which are not applicable on the civil side. Moreover, the benefit of the upward revision would be differently applied to ranks other than Commissioned Officers since they had been granted pensions based on the maximum of 5th CPC scales fitted into the 6th CPC pay bands with effect from 01-07-2009 while officers and all civil employees were granted pensions based on minimum of pay of the pay bands. The comprehensive letter alongwith comprehensive tables would definitely be issued in due course and we would have to be a little patient about the same.




14 comments:

JWO raghuramireddy said...

It is correct, rank ,group,services length ,wighteg all to be taken in consedaration ,thank U major

opinder singh said...

Thanks Maj Navdeep for the information. Hope order/circular/table shall include Disability pension revision along with this or separate orders on it will follow.

Anonymous said...

The table issued earlier should apply here also because only the date of commencement has changed from 23.9.2012 to 1.1 2006.I am not aware of any other change.

Unknown said...

Dear Maj Navdeep
WE are looking up to hearing your views on the recent Rank pay judgement by the honorable SC

Unknown said...

Thanks Buddy

Anonymous said...

Maj Navdeep,
Thanks for the information.
Hope MOD will issue the letter
and we will see it on your blog soon.

Anonymous said...

The hard work and your selfless dedication towards betterment of the servicemen is indeed commendable. At long last the awakening of the defense community, for safeguarding their basic rights, looks on the horizon and you are the genesis of it. Thanx.
Animesh

Azeem said...

Dear Mr Navdeep
Thank you for the clarification we simply start to calculate. Even we start to get the multification factor in the Web. We will have to wait until the comprehensive tables are issued.
Thank you for your help and keep up the good work you inspire the whole ESM community.
Good luck God bless

Justin N Christian said...

Maj Navdeep sir thank you for interesting update...
with reference to pre-2006 OR's(pbor) pension the earlier circular 430,482 and 501 issued by pcda (p) were issued on the basis of weightage and not w.r.t. minimum fitment formula.

SO IT SEEMS THIS UPDATE IS FOR ALL WHO HAVE RENDERED 33 YRS OF QUALIFYING SERVICE AND NOT APPLICABLE TO ALL WHO HAVE RENDERED LESS THEN 33 YRS OF SERVICE AND WHOSE PENSION IS REDUCED PRO-RATE.

Hrishikesh Bhaumik said...

I guess the government circular for implementation of the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court regarding grant of arrears from 01-01-2006 rather than 24-09-2012 should not take much time as it will just be a modification of the earlier circular.

Lt Col G K Mohan Rao said...

Dear Navdeep, The PCDA(p) has already made tables and paid from 24-9-2012 taking into consideration all factors such as grade pay and mil service pay. What is required is to amend the date to 01-01-2006 and that solves the problem. It seems there is some thing deeper reason for the delay which we are unable to figure it out.

Anonymous said...

Are the orders issued by MOD for payment of revised minimum guaranteed pension wef
1-1-2006 instead of 24-9-2012 ?

Veteran said...

Subject : MoD orders issued for implementation of decision of the Supreme Court granting arrears of pension from 01 Jan 2006 rather than 24 Sept 2012.
Circular 547 of PCDA(penions) dated 11 Sep 2015 ,issued based on MOD letter of 03sep 2015 FOR JCO/NCO/OR & Their family pensioners are granting them arrears of pension from 01 Jan 2006 to 30June 2009, at the scale existing for 01 Jul 2009 instead granting the” arrears from 1/1/2006 to 23 Sep 2012 on the existing scale wef 24/09/2012.
Two pertinent points to note are , it is against basic principle of justice, when :-
(a) Decision of the Supreme Court states on , granting arrears of pension from 01 Jan 2006 rather than 24 Sept 2012.
(b) Defence civilian-Pensioners , vide PCDA(Pensions) Circular C-144 dated 14 Aug are granted arrears of pension from 01 Jan 2006 rather than 24 Sept 2012.
(c) The Commissioned officers ,Vide PCDA(Pensions) Circular 548 dated 11 Sep 2015 are granted arrears of pension from 01 Jan 2006 rather than 24 Sept 2012.

The above arbitrary order for JCO/NCO/OR , by the MOD dated 03 sep 2015 and subsequent circular -547 dated 11 Sep of PCDA(pensions) based on the cited MOD order leads to disparities of such an arrear to JCO/NCO/OR and their family pensioners in the very back drop of the supreme court decision.
This needs rectification.

corona8 said...

This comment comes a bit late considering the date of this blog-post, but I feel it is very relevant to the two subjects highlighted in the updates.

Now that the GOI letter on pension revision from 2006 has been issued, followed by the PCDA circular, it is very clear that there is no respite from discrimination to older Major retirees with more than 20 years and 26 years of service. They have not been accorded parity of pension from 01 Jan 2006 with pre 2006 Lt Col retiree pensions (service of 20 years or more) or with pre 2006 Col retiree pensions (service of 26 years or more).

The same applies to pre 2006, in fact pre Dec 2004, Lt Col retirees with more than 26 years who could have hoped for a parity with post Dec 2004 and pre 2006 Col pensions. Perhaps, that would have been too much to expect and we should be grateful for a HSC order that at least made them change the date of revised pensions to 01 Jan 2006 in place of Sep 2012.

But there are a lot of Officers affected in this manner. They would be greatly benefited by advice from Maj Navdeep if there is a basis for some action to correct this anomalous situation, as it appears to be discrimination based on an arbitrary date, whether for cadre revision implementation or AVS-I implementation, both having been implemented retrospectively in a manner to divide retirees into two sub-groups.

For reference, here is a link to some aspects of this matter I had attempted to highlight in this blog post.