Revised pension for aided school retirees from Dec: Punjab to HC

The state government has informed the Punjab and Haryana high court that 147 pensioners from privately managed government-aided schools would receive the revised pension benefits, including arrears from July to November this year, as per the sixth pay commission recommendations by next month.

The high court was on November 14 hearing a contempt petition filed by retirees of government-aided schools, including KK Sharma, Net Singh, Bachittar Singh and Nirmal Singh Bhangoo.

On July 11, the Punjab finance and education departments had informed the court that a decision with regard to the sixth pay commission’s pension benefits had been taken in favour of the petitioners. They said the revised pension would be effective from January 2016 and a decision on arrears due from January 2016 to June this year would be made within six months. The retirees would begin receiving the actual financial benefits from July, it had mentioned. The state was represented by officials, including additional chief secretary (education) Parvinder Pal Singh and finance secretary Gurpreet Kaur Sapra.

A notification issued by the department of school education on June 27 laid out the roadmap for recalculating pensions from 2016 and releasing payments from July.

KK Sharma, annoyed by inordinate delay in implementing the revised pension, move the court after receiving no response to a notice sent to the concerned departments, including secretary of finance and education department, and directorate of public instructions (secondary). When payments were not issued in July as promised, contempt petitions were filed.

“We filed a contempt petition, the first hearing of which was scheduled on October 18. The respondents demanded 10 days to file a compliance report and the next hearing was scheduled on November 14,” said Sharma.

During the hearing on November 14, the court also made it clear that failure to meet this deadline would allow the petitioners to revive their contempt petition. Additionally, the court stated that the responsible government officials would be personally liable to pay a penalty of ₹50,000, to be borne from their own pockets, as compensation for litigation expenses.