The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court has partly allowed a writ petition filed by a retired primary school teacher and set aside a direction for recovery of alleged excess payments from his pensionary benefits, holding that such recovery after retirement is impermissible in view of settled Supreme Court principles.
A Division Bench of Justice Kishore C. Sant and Justice Sushil M. Ghodeswar (judgment authored by Justice Ghodeswar) was hearing a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution challenging the order dated June 8, 2007 passed by the Chief Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad, Osmanabad, directing recovery of excess amounts on the ground of incorrect pay fixation.
The petitioner had retired on November 30, 2005. Shortly before his retirement, on July 2, 2005, an objection was raised by the Account Officer regarding his pay fixation on the ground that he had not acquired a B.Ed. qualification within the stipulated period. Following his retirement, the authorities revised his pay and calculated alleged excess payments of about ?2.8 lakh, culminating in the impugned recovery order.
The Court noted that throughout the petitioner’s service tenure, no objection had been raised regarding his qualifications or pay scale, and there was no allegation of fraud or misrepresentation on his part. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in State of Punjab v. Rafiq Masih (White Washer), AIR 2015 SC 696 and Shyam Babu Verma v. Union of India (1994) 2 SCC 521, the Bench observed that recovery from retired employees is impermissible where excess payments were made by the employer without any fault attributable to the employee, particularly when such payments continued for several years and recovery is sought at the fag end of service or post-retirement.
Holding that the direction to recover amounts from the petitioner’s pensionary benefits was contrary to settled law, the Court quashed the impugned order to the extent it directed recovery and restrained the respondents from effecting any recovery of amounts already paid.
At the same time, the Bench clarified that pension is a statutory right governed by applicable rules, and an employee cannot insist on continuation of an incorrect pay fixation contrary to statutory provisions. The respondents were therefore granted liberty to re-fix the petitioner’s pension strictly in accordance with applicable rules and government resolutions, with such re-fixation to operate prospectively and without resulting in recovery of any amount already paid. No order as to costs was passed.
Appearances:
Advocate Mayur Salunke h/f Advocate V.D. Salunke for the petitioner
Advocate Suhas B. Ghute for the respondents
