Retired employee gets interest on his dues 25 years after high court order

Ahmedabad: An octogenarian from Kerala, A J Varghese, had to wait for a quarter of a century for a municipality in Gujarat to pay him the outstanding interest on his dues post-retirement. Even these dues were paid to him in 2000 under a Gujarat High Court order. Varghese approached the high court again 25 years after it had ordered the authorities to pay 12% interest on the Rs 2.05 lakh principal amount in 2000. Upon a query from the high court regarding the delay, the municipal authority came up with a cheque of Rs 1.61 lakh earlier this week.Varghese was employed as an overseer by Bantwa municipality in Junagadh district in 1970. He took voluntary retirement in 1995 due to the compulsion to return to his native place in Kerala. The municipality did not pay him the difference in pay scale since 1986, when the employees' salary was raised. He was also seeking the leave travel concession, which was due to him. He filed multiple petitions in the High Court and fought for three years, resulting in the High Court ordering the authorities to pay him his dues with 12% interest within one year. He was paid the principal amount but not the interest that accrued between 1997-2000.In his petition filed through advocate Hardik B Shah recently, Varghese submitted that he lives in a remote place in Pathanamthitta, Kerala, and could not repeatedly travel to Gujarat to pursue his case. However, he went to Bantwa no less than 10 times and wrote letters on numerous occasions, but the municipality did not pay the amount, citing various pretexts, including financial constraints. His representations before different authorities also went unheeded. He alleged that the municipal officials were deliberately withholding the payment for malafide reasons. The municipality's financial difficulties cannot justify non-compliance with a High Court order.As an officer tendered the cheque to Varghese's lawyer within two days, Justice Nirzar Desai disposed of Varghese's petition, stating that he would not get into computation at this stage. "If the petitioner is aggrieved by the computation, he may file a civil suit, keeping all the rights and contentions of both sides open."