HC sets aside BMC’s decision on pension

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has set aside the BMC’s decision to recover basic pay from the retirement benefit of an employee, which was wrongly calculated during her tenure. The court observed that such recovery at the fag-end of an employee’s career was not legally permissible.

Grace George Pampoorickal, appointed as an assistant trained teacher in 1970, attained the age of superannuation on February 28, 2010. At the relevant time, her last salary was shown as Rs 9,200 and she did not receive any pension benefits from the corporation. In August 2011, when the pension book was handed over to her, she noted that the last pay drawn had been reduced from Rs 9,200 to Rs 7,410 and recovery of Rs 1,40,030 was ordered from the retirement amount.

An aggrieved Ms Pampoorickal appro-ached the Bombay high court, claiming that the reduction in her pay scale with retrospective effect and without affording her an opportunity was bad in law and unsustainable. The corporation in its reply stated that her last pay drawn had been wrongly fixed on the basis of her being considered a trained graduate teacher. However, the petitioner did not have the required qualification for trained teacher and hence, the amount was reduced.

The court noted that the respondent had sought to revise the last pay drawn by the petitioner with a retrospective effect, which is almost after a period of 17 to 18 months after her retirement.

While setting aside the corporation order, the court relied on a similar case of the HC where the court observed that such recovery at the fag-end of an employee’s career was not legally permissible.