Chandigarh: Punjab and Haryana high court has directed the Haryana govt to count the pre-regularisation service of govt school employees, initially engaged on a part-time, daily-wage or ad hoc basis, as qualifying service for pension and other retiral benefits.




Allowing a petition filed by Jagdish and 188 others, Justice Harpreet Singh Brar directed the state to re-fix their pensionary and retiral benefits and release consequential benefits within three months of receiving a copy of the order passed on Oct 13.




The court clarified that any amount already contributed or paid under the New Pension Scheme shall be adjusted, while the benefit of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) will be subject to verification of initial engagement and regularisation.




The petitioners, through counsel Arvind Kumar Chauhan, sought quashing of the department’s action in not counting their part-time service for OPS. They sought entire continuous service periods to be counted, retiral dues released with 18% annual interest and General Provident Fund (GPF) accounts opened in place of NPS accounts.




Their counsel submitted that the petitioners were regularised between 1996 and 2021 under policies dated Nov 11, 2003, and Feb 27, 2004.




The state counsel, deputy attorney general Naveen Singh Panwar, submitted that five petitioners, Om Parkash, Som Prakash, Joginder, Shish Ram and Dev Kaur, had withdrawn a petition after a division bench stayed a similar order on an appeal filed by the state govt. The HC excluded those five from the final relief.




On the remaining petitioners, the state counsel was unable to controvert that their past service was required to be counted in terms of the judgments cited. He submitted that if the facts remained undisputed, petitioners would be granted the OPS benefit after verification.




The bench observed that the issue was “no longer res integra”, citing earlier judgments of HC and Supreme Court’s decision in Punjab School Education Board and another versus Satnam Singh and others.




Quoting the Supreme Court’s judgment, the high court noted, “...When an employee has rendered long and continuous service, and stands ultimately regularised, denial of pensionary benefits based on technicalities or artificialities is generally unjustified...”




Justice Brar held that “...the respondents cannot exclude the continuous pre-regularisation service of petitioners No.1 to 125 and petitioners No.131 to 189, while determining their qualifying services for the purpose of pensionary benefits...”




It accordingly directed the state to count the qualifying service of these petitioners from their initial engagement till regularisation, followed by regular service, subject to verification.