The Allahabad High Court has held that the service rendered by a government servant before his regularisation, whether as a seasonal, ad-hoc, work-charged or temporary employee, must be counted while determining whether he has the qualifying service required to make him eligible for pension. It held that the pension itself can be computed only on the basis of the regular service rendered by him.

The Court relied on the decisions of the Supreme Court in Prem Singh v. State of U.P. and Uday Pratap Thakur v. State of Bihar, wherein it was clarified that previous ad-hoc or work-charged service is to be counted only towards qualifying service for pension and not towards the amount of pension payable.

Justice Anish Kumar Gupta held,

“In view of the judgements by the Apex Court in Prem Singh (supra) read with Uday Pratap Thakur (supra), law is categorically settled that the previous services rendered by a Government servant prior to his regularisation as ad-hoc, work-charged, seasonal, temporary etc., is required to be counted for the purpose of determining the qualifying service for the pensionary benefits. However, so far as the computation of the pension etc. is required to be done only on the basis of the regular service rendered by such Government servant.”

Petitioner was first engaged as Seasonal Collection Amin in February 1984 and was appointed as Collection Amin on temporary basis from 15.12.1991 to 28.02.1992. The appointment was not extended and he approached the High Court in 1992. Under an interim order passed in that petition he continued as ad-hoc Collection Amin till 08.01.2008, when his services came to an end after his claim for regularization was rejected.

Pursuant to directions of the High Court in 2012, he was re-engaged as Seasonal Collection Amin, regularized on the post of Collection Amin in September 2016, confirmed in November 2018 and retired on 31.07.2019. His claim for pension counting his earlier service was rejected on 02.03.2020 on the ground that as he had been appointed regularly only in September 2016, the old pension scheme was not available to him.

The stand of the State was that he had worked as a regular employee for only 2 years, 10 months and 16 days.

Relying on Prem Singh and on the decisions of coordinate benches of the High Court in Kaushal Kishore Chaubey v. State of U.P. and Rajendra Bahadur Singh v. State of U.P., where pensionary benefits were directed to be computed taking into account the entire service including that rendered as Seasonal Collection Amin, counsel for the petitioner argued that his service from 1984 had to be counted.

Standing counsel for the State relied on Uday Pratap Thakur, in which the Apex Court had considered a rule framed by the State of Bihar treating five years of work-charged service as one year of regular service. On that basis, 32 years of temporary service would come to about six years and five months, which even with the regular service would leave the petitioner short of the ten years required to qualify for pension.

Counting the previous service, the Court held that the petitioner had crossed the ten year mark.

“If we will take into account the previous service of the petitioner w.e.f. 1984 till 2008 and from 2012 to 2016, then it can be safely concluded that the petitioner has attained the benchmark of 10 years qualifying service for the purpose of his eligibility for pensionary benefits and other retiral benefits. However, computation with regard to pension can be done only on the basis of the regular services rendered by the petitioner.”

Holding that the quantum would be calculated on the basis of the regular service rendered from 05.09.2016 till 31.07.2019, the Court directed the respondents to pay the retiral dues and sanction pension within eight weeks.

Case Title: Alakh Prakash Mishra v. State of U.P. and 2 others

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