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K.G. Seshadri v. The Trustees of State Bank of India and Another

Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 333Decided 8 Apr 2026
C.A. No.-004279-004279 - 2026
Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra · Justice N.V. Anjaria

Background

The appellant was appointed as a clerk in the State Bank of India, confirmed after probation in 1979, but from January to December 1998 he remained absent without leave and, despite notices asking him to explain, was declared by the Bank in 2008 to have voluntarily retired/abandoned service as of 12.12.1998. He sought pension benefits, first through a writ petition, then a claim before the Labour Court under the Industrial Disputes Act (dismissed for lack of jurisdiction), and again through writ proceedings, all of which went against him, with the Madras High Court's Division Bench finally dismissing his appeal in 2022, prompting this appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the appellant's claim failed on two independent grounds. First, calculating his actual pensionable service (counted from confirmation, per Rule 20 read with Rule 7 of the SBI Employees' Pension Fund Rules), he had rendered only about 19 years 9 months and 25 days: short of the 20 years required under either Rule 22(i)(a) or 22(i)(c). Second, and more fundamentally, his case was not one of voluntary retirement at all but of voluntary abandonment of service after unauthorised absence, so Rule 22(i)(c) (applicable to genuine voluntary retirement regardless of age) did not apply; and since he had also not attained 50 years of age, he could not qualify under Rule 22(i)(a) either. The Court distinguished the precedents the appellant relied on (Radhey Shyam Pandey and Rugmini Ganesh), noting those cases involved employees whose entitlement to pension was undisputed, unlike here where entitlement itself was in question. The appeal was dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

Pension rules typically require both a minimum period of qualifying service and, depending on the specific rule invoked, a minimum age or a genuine act of voluntary retirement: an employee whose service ends through unauthorised absence/abandonment (rather than a formal voluntary retirement) cannot claim the more favourable "any age, 20 years' service" route, and precedents about pension computation only help where the underlying entitlement to pension is not itself in dispute.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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