JUDGMENT :

A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar, J.

The short issue that arises for consideration in these O.P.(CAT)'s is whether a Government servant who retires on the last working day of the preceding month and whose annual increment falls due on the first of the succeeding month is entitled for sanction of annual increment for the purposes of pension and gratuity ? This being the sole issue on which the O.P.(CAT)'s have been preferred by the Union of India, we do not deem it necessary to record the factual circumstances arising in the individual cases.

2. Briefly stated, the facts that are common to all the cases are that the respondents/applicants retired from their respective establishments on attaining the age of superannuation. Their next annual increment, had they continued in service, would have accrued to them on the very next day. When their claim for reckoning the said increment along with their last drawn pay for the purposes of their retirement benefits did not yield a favourable response from the Government, they approached the Central Administrative Tribunal through the applications that were disposed by the impugned orders of the Tribunal.

3. The Tribunal essentially followed th