PATIALA: The
Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday gave relief to 60 Punjab Police constables on the very first hearing in a writ petition by directing the state government to grant them all pension benefits as per the old scheme by taking into account that they had been serving the department for the last two and half decades.
In a quick decision, the single judge bench of Justice Jaishree Thakur asked the Punjab government to give pension benefits as per the old scheme to 60 special police officers (SPOs), who had been inducted in the force to fight terrorism during 1991 and 1992.
Counsel for the cops
Puneet Sharma
said the state police department initiated a process to regularise the jobs for SPOs in 2000 but it got delayed till 2004. On January 1, 2004, the state government came up with the 'new reconstructed contributory pension scheme' for all fresh recruitments in various government departments.
It was only after the new policy was implemented that the jobs of the 60 SPOs were regularised between 2004-08. However, the department refused to take into consideration that they had been serving the department since 1991-92 and treated their cases as new appointments, denying them benefits of the old pension scheme.
On behalf of the cops, Sharma first sent a representation to the DGP on March 23, but no reply was received. He later filed a writ petition in the HC on April 3 and the case was settled on April 7. Sharma said that the case was settled taking into consideration a similar case filed by another
SPO
Rajesh Kumar, whose pension benefits as per old scheme were granted by Justice Rajiv Narain Raina on January 9, last year.
In its present order, the HC said, "Wherever the rights of the parties have been settled by a judgement of the court and the state has taken all remedies available to it under law against that judgement, even up to the highest court of the land, and the judgement has attained finality, then the state must accept and implement it in its true spirit and grant same relief to other members of the cadre, whose claim was based upon identical facts and points of law."
The Punjab and Haryana high court also put on record, "It is needless to point out that a denial must neither be evasive nor intended to circumvent the orders of the court."