To think that to arrive at the simple fact of what the Cabinet meant when it gave its approval, it should take three long years and a legion of lawyers, speaks volumes of efficiency at higher echelons of bureaucracy in our country. Further, if this could happen in the case dealing with a matter of pay and pension of their own brethren, one isn't surprised that India ranks as low as 132, for ‘ease of doing business' by WB for 2011.

FAITH IN JUDICIARY

On the other hand, it came as a reinforcing affirmation of our faith in the judiciary, when the Principal Bench of the CAT (Central Administrative Tribunal) delivered, a week ago, a simple judgment rectifying the wrong done by the executive to its own former employees. The judgment is an example of brevity, 13 pages, clarity and worthy of emulation, without beating about the bush in legal quibbles and addresses the perfidy perpetrated by babus of the secretariat. The plaint of the pensioners wasn't complex at all.

In accordance with the principles laid down in a seminal judgment by the Supreme Court in 1979, putatively known as D. S. Nakra case and the implementation of the Fifth Central Pay Commission, the Sixth Central Pay Commission under Justice Srikrishna, endorsed the idea of continuing with the scheme of relating the pension of the past retirees to the new pay scales of the ranks from which they retired. Accordingly, in simple terms, after the Sixth CPC, already retired persons were to get pension calculated on the basis of the minimum a government servant — of the same rank — who is to retire a month after implementation of the new pay scales, is expected to get.

The Cabinet approved in toto the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission in respect of past pensioners. However, what the Lords gave, the babus had taken away. The Department of Personnel, Training and Pensioners Welfare and the Department of Expenditure didn't think it was such a good idea and issued a ‘clarification', undoing what the Cabinet had approved. They deliberately confused the newly-introduced pay bands with pay scales, and reckoned that the old retirees could get minimum of the pay band (which covered a range of scales from, say, Rs 37,400 to Rs 67,000), and not the minimum of the corresponding pay scale in the pay band from which the older folks retired.

ERRONEOUS INTERPRETATION

In this case, as the judgment reveals, the mulish attitude of the bureaucracy was in full glory when the pensioners, the youngest of them 66 years old, approached the government before going to the court. Notably, the judgment clearly brings out, “…in the garb of clarification, respondents interpreted minimum of pay in the pay band as minimum of the pay band. This interpretation is apparently erroneous…”. It also remarks, “That even the Minister of State for Finance and Minister of State (PP) taking note of the injustice done to the pre 1.1.2006 pensioners had sent formal proposal to the Department of Expenditure but the said proposal was turned down…”. Evidently, the civil servants don't listen to their political masters even though they make it out that they face the risk of frequent and arbitrary transfers if they aren't pliant.

There is no better time than now to remind the bureaucracy that in June 2010, the then Law Minister, Mr Veerappa Moily, unveiling the National Litigation Policy had stated that, “Challenges to orders of Tribunals would be an exception rather than a matter of routine.” Let us hope the government is as good as its word.

(The author is former Member, Ordnance Factories.)

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