Can contractual staff members who were later regularised, ask for contractual period of service to be taken into account for pension calculation? The Supreme Court says ‘yes’.
The ruling came when a case was being reviewed where the Himachal Pradesh government had contested a decision by the High Court to include contractual service period of employees while calculating their pension. Now, the apex court has also ruled in favour of the employees of the educational and ayurvedic departments. The Court has also directed the State government to process the pension payment within three months for the employees of these departments.
In 2019, the High Court had ordered that the contract service tenure be added to the pension of the widow of an Ayurvedic doctor. The HC had maintained that the Himachal Pradesh government had definitely benefited from the contractual service rendered by the said employee, and that too on lower wages. Therefore, it was unfair to pay pension only on the basis of the period of service post regularisation of the said employee in 2009. The state government chose to calculate his pension from 2009 onwards, whereas the employee had been working on contract well before that. The petitioner, the widow of the said employee (who died in 2011) had asked that her husband’s contractual work also be taken into account for calculation of pension, but her application was rejected by the Himachal government.
Now, with the Supreme Court deciding in favour of the petitioner, many pensioners who were regularised post contractual work will benefit.
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