Supreme Court rules that retired employees who accepted benefits under a pension scheme cannot later claim a different scheme, rejecting NIRD professor's plea.
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A retired government employee cannot later seek benefits under a different pension scheme after accepting retirement benefits under the scheme that covered them throughout their service, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The ruling came in a case involving a retired professor of the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) who sought coverage under the General Provident Fund-cum-Pension Scheme (GPF) instead of the Central Pension Fund Scheme (CPF), according to a report from Upstox. The court rejected the plea, holding that acceptance of CPF retiral benefits prevented the professor from challenging those terms after the fact.
The petitioner, Chandra, joined NIRD as a contractual Research Associate on November 12, 1984. An office order the next day placed him under the CPF Scheme. His services were regularised effective November 7, 1985. Over the years, he served as Assistant Director from March 1992 and Deputy Director from August 1999. He was appointed Professor on May 1, 2007, again on a contractual basis.
A May 4, 2012 office order regularised his professorship, stating the regularisation would take effect from the date of the order and that his service would continue to be governed by the existing CPF Scheme. A colleague, Shyam Sunder Prasad Sharma, received identical terms on the same date.
Chandra retired on January 31, 2017, and collected his retiral benefits on February 14, 2017, including both NIRD's and his own contributions to the CPF. Only after retirement did he approach the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) to challenge the continued CPF coverage, arguing that the NIRD Rules, 2011 and the institute's Service Bye-laws required GPF coverage.
The CAT ruled in his favour on July 15, 2019, citing the Sharma case and directing NIRD to allow him to join the GPF Scheme from the date he became eligible. The Supreme Court had already reversed that earlier decision.
On February 28, 2023, in NIRD versus Shyam Sunder Prasad Sharma and Others, the court held that regularisation under the May 4, 2012 order operated from that date and did not relate back to the date of initial appointment. The apex court noted the regularisation order specifically stated it would take effect from the date of issuance, a condition not challenged by Sharma.
When NIRD challenged the CAT's order in Chandra's case, the High Court applied the Sharma precedent. It found the effect of regularisation was from May 4, 2012, not from initial appointment, and that the petitioner had approached the CAT only after retirement and after receiving CPF benefits.
Before the Supreme Court, the petitioner's counsel tried to distinguish Chandra's case from Sharma's. The bench, comprising Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar, was not persuaded. "We are of the considered view that the adjudication undertaken in S.S.P. Sharma (supra) by this Court would also apply to the case of petitioner," the judgment stated.
The ruling affirms a principle: employees who accept regularisation on specified terms and receive benefits under a particular pension scheme cannot later challenge those terms after retirement. The court found "no reason, whatsoever, to exercise jurisdiction under Article 136 of the Constitution of India" and dismissed the special leave petition.
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