IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.5917 of 2009 Date of decision: 06.04.2010 Smt. Sunheri Devi ….Petitioner versus Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (UHBVNL), Vidyut Bhawan, Sector 6, Panchkula through its Managing Director and others. …Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN ------ Present: Mr. Azad Singh, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. Vibhoi Kalia, Advocate, for Mr. Raghujeet Madan, Advocate, for the respondents. ----- 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? Yes. ----- K.Kannan, J (Oral) 1. The petitioner makes a claim for grant of family pension on the ground that her husband died in the year 1976 having rendered 1 year 10 months and 15 days of regular service. The petitioner appears to have obtained job on compassionate basis and she did not pursue her claim for pension all along and she had made a representation in 2006 but it was not responded favourably and therefore, the writ petition was filed. 2. To the claim of the petitioner, the objections by the respondents are two fold- (i) the claim is belated that for the death of a Civil Writ Petition No.5917 of 2009 - 2 - person in the year 1976, the demand had been made only in the year 2006 and therefore after such a belated representation, the petitioner cannot obtain any relief; (ii) the qualifying years of service is 5 years and the petitioner's husband had only 1 year, 10 months and 15 days and did not qualify for pension. 3. Rule 4 of the Family Pension Scheme of 1964 which originally provided for a period of 5 years as qualifying service for grant of family pension has been amended on 28.09.1979 reducing qualifying years of service from 5 years to 1 year. Admittedly, the petitioner's husband had a period over 1 year of service. The only issue is whether this amendment could be applied retrospectively. This aspect has been dealt with by a Division Bench of this Court in Sundra Devi Versus Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (UHBVNL), Vidyut Bhawan, Panchkula and others in Civil Writ Petition No.10028 of 2004. The case dealt with an employee whose service had been regularized in the year 1970 and he had made a claim in November, 2003. The Division Bench applied the amended scheme to avail to the claimant the benefit of pension, making a further reference to its earlier ruling in Savitri Devi Versus State of Haryana and others-1996(2) RSJ 854. The Court found that the case is squarely covered and upheld the claim for pension. The decision in this case addresses a similar situation. A right to pension is a recurring right and the claim cannot be defeated by limitation or laches. The petitioner shall, therefore, entitled to the claim for family pension. Civil Writ Petition No.5917 of 2009 - 3 - 4. The respondents are directed to release the same along with all the arrears commencing for a period of 3 years prior to the date of the writ petition till the date of payment. The entire exercise shall be done within a period of 8 weeks from the date of the receipt of the copy of the order. 5. The writ petition is allowed on the above terms. There shall be no directions as to costs. (K.KANNAN) JUDGE 06.04.2010 sanjeev