DEOKINANDAN PRASAD Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is just to call 'amen' to a heroic struggle waged by the petitioner in the fall of his life for recovering his hard-earned dues from heartless, unsympathetic and occasionally hostile bureaucracy. In an unequal fight between the mightly State and a retiree, judicial process at the apex Court had to interpose itself more than once to the balance heavily titled against the petitioner. The outcome is reassuring in that the wrong has been righted and a festering wound has healed but the frightening legacy of the whole episode is so disturbing that one shudders at the thought as to how after rendering long, meritorious and devoted service for 38 years the employee was thrown on the thorns of life and left to bleed.

(2.) A Constitution Bench of this Court in D. S. Nakara v. Union of India (1983) 2 SCR 165 : (AIR 1983 SC 130) posed three questions: 'What is a pension , What are the goals of pension and what public interest or purpose, if any, it seeks to serve , and proceeded to answer the same inter alia that pension is not only a compensation for service rendered in the past but it has a broader significance in that it is a measure of socio-economic justice which inheres economic security in the fall of life when physical and mental prowess is ebbing corresponding to aging process and therefore, one is required to fall back on savings. Art. 41 obligates the State within the limits of its economic capacity and development to make effective provisions amongst others for assistance in case of old age, sickness and disablement. Pension provisions are to some extent the legislative response to the Constitutional expectation. But this legal conundrum would provide a paper guarantee if the statutory right to pension is not translated into action in a reasonably short time on retirement leaving the employee to penury and economic destitution.

(3.) The petitioner, a retiree of 1967 had to twice invoke the jurisdiction of this Court under Art. 32 of the Constitution for claiming a paltry pension. It is not necessary to recapitulate the history of the litigation. It does no credit to the respondents and it brings the administration into disrepute. One has only to refer to the two decisions of this Court in Deokinandan Prasad v. State of Bihar (1971) Suppl SCR 634: (AIR 1971 SC 1409) and another inter partes (1983) 2 SCR 921 (925) : (AIR 1983 SC 1134 at p. 1136) to gauge the agony and the harassment heaped on the petitioner.