INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS Vs. ABHIJEET BAIDYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Dozens of intra-court writ appeals and writ petitions were finally decided by a Full Bench of this Court by a common judgment and order dated July 16, 2013 (hereafter the said order). The Bench comprised of Aru`n Mishra, CJ. (as His Lordship then was), and Dipankar Datta and Joymalya Bagchi, JJ. (hereafter the Full Bench). The lead matter was APO 94 of 2009 ( District Inspector of Schools, SE, Kolkata and Anr. vs. Abhijeet Baidya and Ors .). All the appeals carried by the State Government were dismissed, while the writ petitions succeeded to the extent indicated in the said order. After a special leave petition that the State Government carried to the Supreme Court of India from the said order failed on February 24, 2014, steps were taken to implement the directions contained therein albeit not to the satisfaction of all concerned who succeeded before the Full Bench.

(2.) We are now tasked to decide G.A. No. 464 of 2018, an application for clarification at the instance of one Md. Abdul Ghani (hereafter the applicant). His writ petition [W.P. No. 1528 of 2002] had succeeded before a learned Judge, whereupon the State Government and its officers preferred an intra-court writ appeal [APO 121 of 2007]. By the said order, APO 121 of 2007 too stood dismissed. The present application appears to have been necessitated in the wake of the State Government's understanding of paragraph 77 of the said order and its implementation thereof in a particular manner, which divests the applicant of his right to claim pension with effect from the date following the date of his retirement from service (October 31, 2003) on superannuation, i.e., w.e.f. November 1, 2003. The prayer, therefore, is for a clarification of the said order so as to facilitate payment of pension to the applicant by the State Government from November 1, 2003, instead of from September 10, 2014, i.e., the date on which the applicant refunded the employer's share of Provident Fund with interest and additional interest upon being notified by the State Government the quantum required to be refunded in terms of the said order.

(3.) It would be profitable if, at this stage, we sketch a brief outline of the said order as a prologue to our decision on the merits of the rival claims.