Pension refixation to a pensioner’s disadvantage after two years requires DPAR concurrence.

The respondent retired as a Senior Accountant on 30 September 1996.

His pension was fixed at ₹16,307 per month in 2013 and later enhanced following implementation of the Seventh Central Pay Commission recommendations.

In August and September 2017, the petitioners reduced it to ₹21,150 per month, citing a clerical error in the earlier fixation; they also initiated recovery of alleged overpayments.

The Central Administrative Tribunal set aside both the refixation and recovery decisions.

In the writ petition, the petitioners challenged the setting aside of the refixation but did not contest the Tribunal’s decision on recovery.

Whether the respondent’s pension could be refixed to his disadvantage for a clerical error detected more than two years after its authorisation, without the concurrence required by Rule 70(1) of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972.

Whether the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare’s 9 April 2018 noting constituted the required concurrence for the 2017 refixation.

Rule 70(1) of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972 permits revision of an authorised pension to a pensioner’s disadvantage where revision is necessary because of a subsequently detected clerical error; its proviso requires the concurrence of the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) where the error is detected two or more years after pension authorisation.

The Court also applied the principle that where a law prescribes a particular manner for doing an act, that act must be done in that manner or not at all, relying on Taylor v. Taylor, Nazir Ahmed v. The King Emperor and State of Uttar Pradesh v. Singhara Singh.

It referred to Director General, Civil Aviation v. Iqbal Singh Vedi, (2017) 239 DLT 210, concerning application of Rule 70 to pension refixation for clerical error.

The respondent’s pension was authorised on 15 July 2013, while the impugned refixation orders were issued on 31 August and 11 September 2017—more than two years later.

The proviso to Rule 70(1) therefore required prior DPAR concurrence.

The 9 April 2018 noting could not supply that concurrence: it post-dated the refixation orders and, on its face, addressed concurrence only in relation to recovery of the alleged overpayment.

As the prescribed requirement had not been met, the Court upheld the Tribunal’s decision to set aside the refixation orders.

The writ petition was dismissed with no order as to costs; the petitioners did not press their challenge to the Tribunal’s decision on recovery.