The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that where a retired employee's real grievance is the pay fixed during service, and the shortfall in pension is merely a consequence of it, the wrong crystallises into a completed act on superannuation and cannot be revived years later by describing it as a continuing deficiency in pension.

Justice Harpreet Singh Brar observed, "An employee who chose not to agitate the correctness of his pay throughout his service cannot, years after retirement, revive a dead claim by relabelling it as a continuing deficiency in his pension."

Dismissing the petition of a retired Lab Attendant of a government-aided college, the Court also laid down a three-category framework for how delay and laches apply to service disputes, emphasising that courts "must look to the substance of the grievance and not to the label attached to it."

The petitioner joined a government-aided college in Haryana as a Peon in 1971, was later promoted as Lab Attendant (Under-Matric), and retired on May 31, 2013. His pension order was issued in December 2013.

He sought refixation of his pay in the scale of Rs 950-1500, payable to Matriculate Lab Attendants, instead of Rs 775-1025, with effect from January 1, 1986, and consequential refixation of his pension.

He relied on a 2008 judgment of a Coordinate Bench in Lachhman Singh v. State of Haryana, which granted Under-Matric Lab Attendants at Government College, Hisar, parity with Matriculate Lab Attendants, and on the State's 2009 order implementing it. He argued that the duties of both posts were identical, that the State had itself relaxed the qualification for Lab Attendants in 1961, and that under Section 6 of the Haryana Affiliated Colleges (Security of Service) Act, 1979, Government pay scale orders apply equally to aided college employees.

The petitioner had served a legal notice in 2014 and a representation in 2017, and had earlier filed two writ petitions, in 2013 and 2019, both withdrawn with liberty to file afresh.

The State argued that the petitioner retired in 2013 and could not raise a pay fixation dispute after retirement by projecting it as a pension dispute, and that, unlike the petitioners in Lachhman Singh who approached the Court in 1988, he had remained silent for years.

The law on delay

Relying on U.P. Power Corporation v. Ram Gopal and State of Uttaranchal v. Shiv Charan Singh Bhandari, the Court reiterated that writ courts are reluctant to protect those who have slept over their rights, and that repeated representations neither keep a stale claim alive nor furnish a fresh cause of action.

It noted that under M.R. Gupta v. Union of India and the Full Bench ruling in Saroj Kumari v. State of Punjab, wrong pay fixation is a continuing wrong giving rise to a fresh cause of action every month, but only while the employee is in service. Once the employee retires, it is no longer a continuing wrong, as held by a Coordinate Bench in Prem Nath v. State of Punjab. The Court also referred to Shiv Dass v. Union of India, which held that although the cause of action in pension matters continues month to month, courts may still reject a belated claim or restrict relief to about three years.

The Court then noted cases where arrears are not capped at three years, including the Supreme Court's recent decision in Maya Banerjee v. Union of India, which followed S.K. Mastan Bee v. General Manager, South Central Railway to grant an illiterate widow family pension from her husband's date of death in 2000, and a Division Bench ruling of the High Court in Union of India v. Ex. HAV Om Prakash, which, relying on Union of India v. SGT Girish Kumar, held that arrears of disability pension must flow from the date the benefit became due.

Summarising the above, the Court classified service disputes into three categories:

The first covers claims that will ordinarily be defeated by delay unless it is satisfactorily explained. These include grievances arising from a one-time act such as termination, dismissal or non-selection; claims relating to seniority or promotion where reopening would unsettle third-party rights, which should be raised within six months to a year; and claims by retired employees whose real grievance is the pay fixed during service, with the pension shortfall being only its consequence.

The second covers continuing wrongs, where the claim may be entertained despite delay but arrears are ordinarily restricted to three years before the petition. This includes wrong pay fixation while the employee remains in service, and cases where the pensionary entitlement itself is the subject of the wrong, such as pension paid at a lesser figure, wrongly computed at the outset, or denied altogether. Even here, the Court retains discretion to reject the claim or restrict relief.

The third covers claims where arrears flow from the date of entitlement, namely family pension claimed by a widow, particularly where she is illiterate and the employer was obliged to offer it without litigation, and disability pension payable to members of the Armed Forces, which partakes of the character of property.

Petitioner's claim falls in the first category

Applying the framework, the Court found that the petitioner's prayer for refixation of pension depended entirely on his placement in the higher pay scale from 1986, so his real grievance was the pay granted to him during service. Since he retired in May 2013 and filed the petition more than a decade later, the claim fell within the first category and could not be treated as a continuing cause of action. The Court noted that no proper explanation had been offered for the delay and that repeated representations would not keep the claim alive.

Declining to exercise its writ jurisdiction, the Court dismissed the petition.