Daily-wage service cannot count toward pension when regularisation occurs after 1 April 2003.

The respondent was engaged as a daily-wage driver from 28 September 2000. In an earlier writ petition, the High Court directed the appellants to consider his request for appointment to a permanent Driver post; it did not direct that service benefits be reckoned from his daily-wage appointment.

He was temporarily appointed to a permanent vacancy under Rule 10(a)(i)(1) on 19 May 2011, and his service was regularised from 21 May 2011. His request to regularise his daily-wage service from 2000 and grant consequential benefits was rejected. A Single Judge quashed that rejection and directed the grant of service benefits from 28 September 2000; the State appealed.

Whether the earlier writ order entitled the respondent to have service benefits reckoned from his initial daily-wage appointment in 2000

Whether the respondent could count his pre-regularisation daily-wage service towards qualifying service or claim pension under the Tamil Nadu Pension Rules, 1978, given his appointment and regularisation after 1 April 2003

The proviso to Rule 2 of the Tamil Nadu Pension Rules, 1978 excludes from those Rules Government servants appointed on or after 1 April 2003 to posts borne on a pensionable establishment.

Rule 11(4) permits half of qualifying non-provincialised, consolidated-pay, honorarium, or daily-wage service to be counted for retirement benefits only subject to its conditions, including absorption into regular service before 1 April 2003.

In State of Tamil Nadu v. R. Kaliyamoorthy, 2019-5-LW-673, the Full Bench held that employees appointed or regularised after the cutoff date cannot count half of their past service under Rule 11(4); the ruling was affirmed in State of Tamil Nadu v. P. Arunachalam, (2024) 2 CTC 561.

The Court held State of Bihar v. Baliram Singh, Civil Appeal No. 10806 of 2018, inapplicable because it did not concern the Tamil Nadu Pension Rules or a pari materia provision.

The earlier writ order required consideration of the respondent’s request but did not grant retrospective service benefits from his daily-wage appointment; the Court also observed that such relief could not generally be granted as a matter of law.

The respondent’s appointment to the permanent post and regularisation both took effect in 2011, after the 1 April 2003 cutoff. Applying Rule 2 and the Full Bench ruling in Kaliyamoorthy, the Court concluded that the 1978 Pension Rules did not apply to him and, in any event, his daily-wage service could not be counted under Rule 11(4), which requires regularisation before the cutoff date.

It made no order as to costs and closed the connected civil miscellaneous petition.