RETIRED INSURANCE EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The cut-off date of 1st Jan., 1986 in the Life Insurance Corporation of India (Employees) Pension Rules, 1995 (1995 Rules, for short) is at the centre of the controversy between the petitioners and the respondents in this petition. The petitioners claim and contend that by prescribing the cut-off date as 1st January, 1986 in the 1995 Rules, the respondents have discriminated against them in the matter of determining the eligibility for the grant of pension on superannuation and that if this discrimination is removed, the petitioners also become eligible for this benefit.

(2.) This writ petition has been filed by the Retired Insurance Employees Association, petitioner No. 1 which claims to be a society registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961 and six other petitioners individually and as representatives of all former employees of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC, for short), who all retired prior to 1st Jan., 1986. Petitioners 2 to 7 claim to have been in the service of LIC, having retired therefrom on varying dates, say Oct. 82, Oct. 83 or Feb. or Dec. 85 and so on and so forth. In any case all of them retired form the service of LIC prior to 1st Jan., 1986, which means, in other words that none of them was in the service of the LIC on or after 1st Jan., 1986.

(3.) In exercise of the power conferred by Sec. 48 of the Life Insurance Corporation Act, 1956, the Central Government promulgated 1995 Rules under which, the employees working in the LIC were granted the benefit of pension after retirement, instead of the then prevailing Provident Fund Scheme, after having rendered the minimum prescribed qualifying service in the Corporation. Broadly speaking 1995 Rules, even though applied in the matter of grant of retiring pension to all employees prospectively who are in the service of the LIC, in respect of the past employees it provided that such of the employees who were in the service of the Corporation on or after 1st Jan., 1986 but had retired before 1st Nov., 1993 and those who retired on or after 1st Nov., 1993 but before the notified date etc. etc. would be eligible for the grant of the benefit of pension after retirement, subject to certain other eligibility considerations, to which we are not concerned in this case. Our sole concern, rather the only one is about the fixation of the cut-off date as first Jan., 1986. Other speculations in Rule 3 of 1995 Rules regarding the eligibility criteria, apart from the cut-off date do not concern us at all in this case.