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Uday Pratap Thakur and Anr. vs. The State of Bihar (Civil Appeal No. 3155 of 2023, with connected appeals)

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 461Decided 28 Apr 2023
Civil Appeal No. 3155 of 2023
M.R. Shah · C.T. Ravikumar · J.B. Pardiwala as the co-judge

Background

The appellants had worked for many years as "work-charged" employees (a category of government worker engaged for specific work rather than on a regular sanctioned post) in Bihar, before their services were eventually regularized under the Work Charged Establishment Revised Service Conditions (Repealing) Rules, 2013. A rule under this scheme said their work-charged years would count toward pension only to the extent needed to make up any shortfall in the minimum qualifying service, counted at the rate of one year of pension-qualifying service for every five years of work-charged service, rather than counting the full work-charged period. A Full Bench of the Patna High Court upheld this rule, and the employees appealed.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that work-charged employees are fundamentally different from regularly appointed employees (who go through a formal recruitment process onto a sanctioned post), so their earlier work-charged years cannot simply be counted in full towards pension as if they had always been regular employees. At the same time, the Court recognized that denying pension altogether to someone who had rendered long work-charged service, purely because they hadn't completed the "regular" qualifying period, would be unfair, which is exactly why Rule 5(v) exists, allowing work-charged years to be added (at the one-year-per-five-years rate, and further if needed) only to bridge any shortfall in qualifying service, not to inflate the pension amount itself. The Court distinguished the employees' reliance on an earlier ruling (Prem Singh), noting that decision only held work-charged service must count towards qualifying service for pension eligibility, not that it must be counted for calculating the pension amount. The appeals were dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

Employees who worked in a "work-charged" or similarly informal engagement before being regularized are entitled to have that service count toward meeting minimum pension-eligibility requirements, but they cannot claim that the entire work-charged period should be treated the same as regular service for computing the actual pension amount: the specific regularization scheme's formula governs that calculation.

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

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