Srinagar: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has directed the Additional Chief Secretary of UT of J&K to appear before it if the Forest department fails to comply with an order that directed release of pension and related benefits to an employee who retired in 2019.
Zahoor Ahmad Ahangar had attained superannuation in June 2019 but has been forced to run from pillar to post for this pension and other related incentives. The UT’s Forest department disputing his date of birth (DoB) has since withheld his pecuniary benefits.
Ahangar has accepted the DoB as set in records by the department but true to their “nauseating authoritarian babugiri”, the concerned officers have deprived the retired employee of his very post-retirement benefits.
To prove their argument of “disputed nature of the age of the retired employee”, the officers of the department sent an order for perusal by the CAT Srinagar. The jurists at the Tribunal were aghast to find that the Govt order No. 526-FST of 1997 dated 12-12-1997, actually “relates to the grant of 15 days’ half pay leave in favour of one Shri R.M.Saxena – IFS, the then Director, J&K Forest Protection Force, Kashmir”.
Horrified at this “distorted” submission of facts and “deprivation” of the rights of the retired employee, the CAT directed the respondent authorities “to comply with the judgement passed by its court on May 8, 2023 in its letter and spirit. Failing which, the Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Forest Department, Kashmir, shall remain present in person before the court on next date of hearing”.
The personal appearance has been sought in the peculiar facts and circumstances of this case and to uphold the rule of law, the order said and listed the matter on November 09, 2024.
A contempt petition filed by the retiree is pending before the CAT here from November 2023 and various detailed orders have been passed by it on the matter from time to time.
Perusal of the judgement passed by its court in May 2023 reveals that the respondents were to calculate the pension and other pensionary benefits of the petitioner retiree after taking the date of his superannuation as June 30, 2019 and to issue proper PPO. They were ordered to release the pension and pensionary benefits to the applicant along with the arrears.
The exercise was to be completed by the respondents within three months. The orders passed in the contempt petition further reveal that the petitioner has not even been paid his provisional pension.
The court at the Tribunal had ordered for the personal appearance of the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, J&K, Roshan Gaggi.
Respondents were also made conscious that the right to pension cannot be taken away by mere executive fait or administrative instructions. The CAT had made it clear that pension and gratuity are not mere bounties or given out of generosity of the employer, but that an employee earned it from his/her long service rendered in the department.
The petitioner, submitted that it does lie in the mouth of the respondents to once again dispute his DOB when they have already passed order of superannuation of the petitioner dated 02 03-2019.
He further submitted that it is only a ploy to protract the implementation of the judgement passed by this court in its letter and spirit.
The Tribunal recording its anguish said “during the entire service period of the petitioner, the respondents never raised any objection with regard to the issuance of that order, as such, it is not open to them to raise the issue now”.
It said “perusal of the statement of facts/compliance reveals that the issue has been raised after 27 years and that too after retirement of the petitioner, same would be against the settled principles of law and judicial pronouncement supra.”
