Delhi Transport Corporation v. Balwan Singh & Ors.
Background
The respondents were former Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) employees who had taken voluntary retirement, but were denied pension because certain periods when they had remained absent without authorisation (and were not paid salary for that period) were excluded from their "qualifying service," leaving them short of the 10-year minimum needed for pension. An earlier two-judge DTC v. Lillu Ram ruling had upheld a similar exclusion, but a different two-judge bench in this very appeal doubted that reasoning and referred the question to a larger bench, raising concerns such as whether unauthorised-absence periods should count against pension without the employee ever being formally notified that it would.
Decision Breakdown
The three-judge bench held that the applicable Pension Rules unambiguously excluded from "qualifying service" any period for which leave salary was not paid, and that this plain, literal rule could not be overridden by administrative circulars or by requiring prior formal notice to the employee that the absence would count against them. The Court rejected the argument that the DTC's Pension Scheme (introduced shortly before the VRS but not actually implemented until 1995) should have required service-record entries flagging the unauthorised absence, holding that since the scheme was not even operative at the relevant time the question of such entries did not arise, and in any case could not override the Rule's plain language. The Court therefore agreed that the respondents did not qualify for pension for the disputed period, reaching essentially the same outcome as the earlier Lillu Ram decision but via different reasoning (literal rule-construction rather than a notice requirement). It accordingly allowed DTC's appeal and set aside the order below that had favoured the employees, while directing that DTC would not seek a refund of any amounts already paid to the respondents under an earlier interim order, to avoid hardship.
Lesson Learnt
Pension and service-benefit eligibility is governed strictly by the plain wording of the applicable rules: a period for which an employee was not paid leave salary can be excluded from "qualifying service" for pension even without a separate, formal notice to the employee that it would be so treated.