The main legal point established is that the Doctrine of Approbate and Reprobate applies, and once an order attains finality, it cannot be challenged unless for fraud or lack of jurisdiction.

JUDGMENT :

1. This is an application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India wherein the writ petitioner is aggrieved by an order dated December 27, 2017 passed by the District Inspector of Schools (S.E.), Jalpaiguri, wherein he has held that in the case of the petitioner, pensionary benefits cannot be recalculated on the basis of erroneously mentioned last drawn salary of the petitioner and therefore, revised pension payment order cannot be issued.

2. By an order dated April 8, 2011, a co ordinate bench of this Court had passed an order in favour of the petitioner directing the respondent authorities to refund the amount deducted from the overdrawn amount indicated in the pension payment order. This part of the order has been implemented by the State authorities.

3. The order also contained a direction on the concerned authority to recalculate the retiral dues of the petitioner by taking into consideration the last drawn salary of the petitioner and to issue a revised pension payment order, so that, the arrear dues as per such recalculation together with interest at the rate of 8% per annum could be paid to the petitioner. However, the process of recalculation of the revised pension payment order was not completed till the year 2016 and when the matter came up before the Assistant Director, Pension, Provident Fund and Group Insurance, West Bengal, the authorities directed the concerned District Inspector of Schools to consider the case of the petitioner in the light of the judgment passed in a similar case of State of West Bengal and ors. Vs. Amalendu Sekhar Bera & anr. (M.A.T. 98 of 2015 with C.A.N. 1659 of 2015 with C.A.N. 1821 of 2015) [Coram: Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay and Ishan Chandra Das, JJ.].

4. On consideration of the same, the District Inspector of Schools passed the impugned order. The relevant portion of the Division Bench order in Amalendu Sekhar Bera (supra) is delineated below for the sake of clarity :

“The respondent No.1/writ petitioner cannot receive excess pensionary benefits on account of the wrong fixation of last drawn salary. After detection of the error in fixation of pay of the respondent No.1/writ petitioner, the authorities concerned namely, the appellants/petitioners herein had rightly corrected the last drawn salary of the said respondent No.1/writ petitioner so that the respondent no.1/writ petitioner herein cannot receive any excess pensionary benefit in future.

We do not find any error in the aforesaid act and/or decision of the appellants/petitioners herein.

Therefore, we modify the impugned judgment and order under appeal passed by the learned Single Judge by permitting the appellants/petitioners herein to fix the last drawn salary of the respondent No.1/writ petitioner by deducting the excess amount which was earlier add with the last pay on account of the wrong fixation of the pay of the said respondent No.1/writ petitioner.

Since the appellants/petitioners herein have already corrected the last drawn salary of the respondent No.1/writ petitioner by deducting the excess amount from the last pay of the said respondent No.1/writ petitioner and issued the revised Pension Payment Order on the basis of the corrected last pay, we are of the opinion that the said appellants/petitioners are not required to recalculate the retiral dues of the respondent No.1/writ petitioner on the basis of the erroneously mentioned last drawn salary of the said respondent No.1/writ petitioner and no further revised Pension Payment Order should also be issued as directed by the learned Single Judge.”

5. The principle laid down by the Division Bench in Amalendu Sekhar Bera & anr. (supra) is that no revision of the pension payment order can be made on the basis of erroneously mentioned last drawn salary. The Hon’ble Division Bench had reversed the order of the learned Single Judge directing the authorities to make such correction.

6. Counsel for the petitioner submits that the order passed in favour of the writ petitione