IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.6873 of 1989 (O&M) Date of decision: 07.12.2011 J.R. Abrol, 155, Aggar Nagar, Ludhiana. ...Petitioner versus Haryana State Electricity Board, Panchkula, through its Chairman, and another. ....Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN ---- Present: Mr. Satinder Khanna, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. Mohnish Sharma, Advocate, for respondents 1 & 2. ---- 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? No. 2. To be referred to the reporters or not ? No. 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest ? No. ---- K.Kannan, J. (Oral) 1. The petitioner seeks for a weightage of an additional period of 5 years for computing his total number of years of service in terms of a voluntary retirement scheme floated by the respondents. According to him, he had opted for voluntary retirement which was accorded to him on 21.08.1983 after completing 25 years and 8 months of service. His plea was that he was entitled to an additional period of 5 years for the purpose of pension and gratuity, but this was not given on wrong reading of the relevant provisions. It would, therefore, become necessary to Civil Writ Petition No.6873 of 1989 (O&M) - 2 - reproduce the scheme announced by the respondents and which was claimed by the petitioner as applicable to him. “vii) while granting proportionate pension to a Govt. employee retiring voluntarily under this scheme, weightage of upto five years would be given as an addition to the qualifying service actually rendered by him. The grant of weightage of upto five years will, however, be subject to the following conditions:- a) The total qualifying service after allowing the weightage should not, in any event, exceed thirty years' qualifying service and does not be beyond the date of superannuation, and b) The total qualifying service after giving the weightage should not exceed the qualifying service which he would have had, if he had retired voluntarily at the lowest age/minimum service limit applicable to him for voluntary retirement prescribed under rule 3.26 (a) of C.S.R. Volume-I, part-I, or any other similar rule applicable to him. viii) The weightage given under the scheme will be only in addition to the qualifying service for purpose of pension and gratuity. It will not entitle the Govt. Civil Writ Petition No.6873 of 1989 (O&M) - 3 - employee retiring voluntarily to any notional fixation of pay for purpose of calculating the pension and gratuity which will be based on the actual emoluments calculated with reference to the date of retirement. 2. This makes it clear that in no case a person could seek for a computation which would exceed 30 years. The further limitation as prescribed above is that the weightage would not be higher than the number of years of service left if he had not opted for a voluntary retirement and when he would have otherwise been superannuated. In this case, the contention is, he had another 11 years of service left and, therefore, he was entitled to be given the weightage to 4 years and 4 months to enable to him the maximum years of service. Any other manner of reading of the provision which is extracted above shall be impermissible. The denial of such a right as claimed by him was unjustified. The writ petition is allowed and the petitioner shall be entitled to the weightage of service in the manner referred to above and the terminal benefits shall be calculated on such a reckoning and released to the petitioner with interest at 6% from the date when it fell due within a period of 8 weeks from the date of receipt of copy of this order. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE 07.12.2011 sanjeev