UPENDRA NARAIN SINGH, SON OF LATE TRIBENI PRASAD SINGH Vs. B.R.AMBEDKAR BIHAR UNIVERSITY, MUZAFFARPUR THROUGH THE REGISTRAR, B.R.AMBEDKAR BIHAR UNIVERSITY, MUZAFFARPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner retired as Head of the Department of History from S.R.K. Goenka College, Sitamarhi, a constituent college of the Bihar University on 30.1.1997. The present writ application relates to dispute regarding pensionary benefits.

(2.) FOR the Universities of Bihar, other than Patna University, Patna and Rajendra Agriculture University, Pusa, Samastipur, the Chancellor has framed statutes for grant of retirement benefits to the employees of those Universities. This is commonly referred to as the Triple Benefit Scheme. There are three retirement plans that are available to be chosen from by an employee of the University. The first as contained in Appendix -A normally referred to as Scheme -A under which on retirement, a person is entitled to General Provident Fund - cum -Pension and also entitled to Gratuity. The second is contained in Appendix -B referred to as Scheme -B where the retirement benefit is Contributable Provident Fund -cum -Gratuity and in this case, the employees ' contribution to Provident Fund is limited to 8% of the pay. The third is Contributory Provident Fund alone and is commonly referred to as Scheme -C in which the employers ' contribution to the provident fund is 10% of the employees ' salary. These statutes were enforced with effect from 1.4.1972 and were issued on 18.11.1980. Clause 3 thereof dealt with applicability of the statute and provided that the statute would apply to employees who had joined the service of University prior to 1.4.1978 and it provided that the employee had to make an option for availing benefits under either one of the schemes. Clause 4 thereafter provided that option had to be exercised within three months of the date of publication of the Scheme and option once exercised shall be final. The reason for this cut off was obvious inasmuch as in each of the Schemes, deductions were contemplated which had to be invested in a particular manner and became payable to the employee on a particular day in a particular manner. The financial treatment which was received by an employee during course of his employment under the three schemes was different.

(3.) PETITIONER admits having made an application and exercised his option in terms of Scheme -B that is Contributory Provident Fund -cum -Gratuity Scheme. He was, thus, not entitled to pension. On his retirement, he got the amounts to the credit of his contributory provident fund account and he received gratuity of Rs. 1 lac which was the maximum admissible then. In 2003, the matter of exercising option were being considered and ultimately the Registrar of the University informed the State Government that examining the matter, it was found that none of the employees of the University had exercised their option within three months. That being so, as provided in Clause 4 of the Retirement Benefit Scheme, their option was invalid and by default, all employees were deemed to be in Scheme -A.