Gujarat HC Counts Retired Corporation Employee’s 8½ Years Of Panchayat Service Toward Pension, Orders Pension And Family-Pension Arrears

The petitioner was appointed in the District Panchayat on 15 May 1973, transferred to the Gujarat Water Resources Development Corporation on 15 July 1978, and retired from the Corporation on 30 November 1998.

The judgment records his Panchayat service as eight years and six months.

He sought to have his Panchayat service counted as qualifying service for pension.

He relied on earlier Gujarat High Court decisions allowing similar claims; the State relied on a 2024 coordinate-bench decision dismissing an identical claim for delay and argued, alternatively, that arrears should be limited to three years before filing.

The Court relied on Government Resolution dated 14 October 1981, under which transferred employees were treated as being on deputation with the Corporation until absorption, and on earlier Gujarat High Court decisions holding that qualifying service could include the relevant service before absorption, with pension liability resting on the District Panchayat or State rather than the Corporation.

It applied the continuing-wrong principle in Union of India v. Tarsem Singh, (2008) 8 SCC 648: recurring pension claims may be considered despite delay, although arrears are ordinarily limited to three years before the writ petition.

It also referred to R.S. Deodhar v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1974 SC 259, for the principle that delay is a matter of judicial discretion, not an inflexible bar.

The Court treated the earlier decisions of coordinate benches and Division Benches as binding and relied on judicial discipline and constructive res judicata in rejecting the State’s proposed arrears limitation.

The Court considered the petitioner’s claim governed by earlier decisions concerning employees transferred from Panchayats to the Corporation, which had recognized pension entitlement by counting the relevant service and had been affirmed by Division Benches.

Although a coordinate bench had dismissed a similar petition for delay in 2024, the Court followed the earlier binding decisions, including Division Bench authority.

It further held that delay did not defeat this recurring pension claim.

The Court rejected the proposed three-year arrears cap because the State had not sought that limitation in earlier cases involving identically situated employees, who had received full arrears; it considered the State’s late contention barred by constructive res judicata.

The Court directed that the petitioner’s service from 15 May 1973 to 14 October 1981 be treated as qualifying service and ordered the respondents to calculate his pension and family pension from the relevant dates, pay arrears, and continue regular family-pension payments.

Any CPF amount paid for the relevant Panchayat-service period may be adjusted against arrears, with an opportunity for the petitioner to challenge the calculation.

The judgment specifies a four-month period for completing the calculation and arrears payment and also states that the exercise, including payment, is to be completed within eight weeks of upload.