Recovery of commutation: Ex-forest officials move CAT .‘Officers Knew Rule When They Opted For Scheme’

Recovery of commutation: Ex-forest officials move CAT .

‘Officers Knew Rule When They Opted For Scheme’

SagarKumar.Mutha@timesofindia.com 29.11.2024 

Hyderabad : A group of retired chief and principal chief conservators of forest department along with a few retired senior bureaucrats approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), urging it to direct the central govt to stop recovering commutation amount from their pension every month. 

Telangana high court has been passing orders directing the state govt to stop recovery the moment it completely gets back its amount. Dealing with a batch of petitions filed by retired tahsildar Bobbadi Appa Rao and others, the AP high court too has issued an interim direction to the state to stop recovering the amount since the state has already recovered the commutation amount. In fact, AP has directed its treasury wing not to deduct the commutation portion of pension from all those pensioners who have completed 11 years and three months till furter orders. A division bench of Telangana high court comprising Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Namavarapu Rajeshwara Rao heard a petition filed by MV SN Acharyulu and 11 others. It noted their contention that interim protection from recovery was already granted by high courts of Punjab and Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala and Allahabad and passed a restraint order directing the state to stop recovery in all the deserving cases. “No recovery can be made henceforth without the permission of this court,” the bench said in its recent order. 

CAT bench in Hyderabad, however, cited the order of the Supreme Court and refused to grant any interim protection to the central govt employees. The CAT bench of judicial member Lata Baswaraj Patne and administrative member Shalini Misra said that applicants before it belong to All India Services who knew the rule position when they opted for commutation of pension. “This commutation is purely voluntary and optional and there is no compulsion that they should avail it at the time of retirement,” the tribunal bench said.

After opting for the commutation of pension and after enjoying the benefit up to certain years, the principle of estoppel should prevent them from raising the objections to the existing rules at a later stage, the bench said. The bench also said that mere reference to the orders of the high courts, without considering the rules and the law laid down by the Supreme Court in similar cases, is of no use. “If the applicants are aggrieved by the action of the central govt, they should first approach the competent authority,” it said. Instead of doing that, they straight away came to the tribunal. They challenged the rules without exhausting the available remedies.