ONGC RETIRED OFFICERS ASSOCIATION Vs. ONGC

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE present petition is filed by two petitioners, one, ONGC Retired Officers Association and Shri V. G. Srinivasan, President (as he then was) of petitioner No. 1. The petition is directed against the respondent Oil and Natural Gas Commission (the Commission for brevity) for excluding the employees who have retired prior to 1 -4 -1990 from granting the benefits under superannuation benefit scheme. It is the grievance of the petitioners that the scheme, formulated by the Commission is made applicable only to those employees who retired on 1 -4 -1991, or thereafter. It is the case of the petitioners that in fact a draft scheme was circulated for eliciting opinion poll by the Directorate of Personnel of the Commission. In that it was mentioned in clause (1) that :

(2.) MR . R. H. Mehta, the learned Advocate for the Commission has invited my attention to the affidavit filed on behalf of the Commission wherein para 9 (ii) states that, the scheme which was circulated in the year 1987 was only a draft scheme and it was, as the title shows, was circulated for eliciting opinion poll. It is also pointed out that it was thereafter with necessary modifications that it was recommended to the Central Govt. for making the scheme in question effective from 1 -4 -1990. Mr. Mehta has also invited my attention to letter dated 18 -9 -1991, whereby the Union Ministry of petroleum and Natural Gas granted its approval to the scheme with a modification so far as applicability of the said scheme is concerned in clause (iii) of the said letter which reads as under :

(3.) MR . Majgaonkar for the petitioner urged that as regards the action of the respondent -Commission of forwarding the scheme to the Union Government vide letter dated 29 -9 -1991 with a changed date of 1 -4 -1990 instead of 7 -10 -1987, no justification is put forward by the Commission.