KSHITIZ SHARMA Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has filed this Pubic Interest Litigation (in brevity 'the PIL') under Chapter XXII-A Rule 385A to 385R of the High Court Rules read with Article 309 of the Constitution of India with the following prayers:-

(2.) The petitioner, heard in person, through video conferencing alleged in the petition that the State Government by exercising the powers conferred by the proviso of the Article 309 of the Constitution and Rule 21C of the Rajasthan Service Rules, 1951 (in brevity 'the Rules of 1951'), formulated the Rajasthan 'The New General Provident Funds Rules, 1997' (in brevity 'the Rules of 1997'). The Rules of 1997 were formulated so as to reduce or minimize the difficulties faced by the government servants in getting their provident funds claims cleared. However, the State Government from time to time through various amendments has changed the basic structure of the fund by exercising the power under Article 309 of the Constitution and Rule 21 of the Rules of 1951. These amendments provide that the account holders can also deposit their gratuity, commutation of pension, leave encashment etc. in their provident fund account. The petitioner further alleged in the aforesaid PIL that due to lack of proper clarification and classification between the provident fund account of servicing and retired employees, there is a scope of misusing this scheme by the retired employees by using advantage of taxation laws which were meant only for servicing employees. The petitioner along-with the PIL has annexed Annex.3-amendment dated 28.06.2012, by which again an amendment was introduced under Article 309 of the Constitution of India and Rule 21 of the Rules of 1951, wherein sub-rule (1) of Rule 4 of the Rules of 1997 was substituted, which reads ad- infra:-

(3.) We have heard the petitioner in person through video conferencing and scanned and scrutinized the entire material which is with the instant PIL.