Daily wage service cannot be counted towards pension eligibility without a specific legal basis, as established in the Sunder Singh ruling, which is not applicable in this case.

JUDGMENT :

G.S. Sandhawalia, C.J.

The present Letters Patent Appeal is directed against the order of the learned Single Judge, passed in Civil Writ Petition No. 1223 of 2022, decided on 2^nd September, 2024.

2. The learned Single Judge rejected the claim as such of the present appellants to add two years’ service rendered by them, on daily wage basis, which was claimed in terms of the law laid down by the Apex Court in Civil Appeal No. 6309 of 2017, titled Sunder Singh versus State of Himachal Pradesh & others, and to commute the pension payable to them.

3. The learned Single came to the conclusion that the judgment as such in Sunder Singh’s case (supra) was only passed in the peculiar facts and circumstances of that case, where Class-IV employees were not having ten years’ service after regularization. In such circumstances, it has been ordered that daily wage service of five years will be treated equal to one year of regular service for pension and where services are more than eight years, but less than 10 years, their services will be reckoned as ten years.

4. The learned Single Judge further held that in the aforesaid judgment, the Apex Court has nowhere laid down that daily wage service shall be counted for any other purpose except rendering a person eligible for the receipt of pension so as to create a fiction that service rendered by the incumbent should be treated as ten years’ service by giving him the benefit of one year for a daily wage service of five years for the purpose of pension.

5. The learned Counsel for the appellants/petitioners has only relied upon the observations of the Apex Court.

6. We have gone through the writ petition filed by the appellants/petitioners. Their whole case is based upon the judgment in Sunder Singh’s case (supra) and there is no reference to any specific rule on the basis of which, they claim the counting of the daily wage period for the purposes of getting pension, and neither any details have been given of the period of daily wage service they had put in.

7. The specific stand of respondents No 1 to 4 in the writ petition as such was that the petitioners were regular employees of the respondents-Department, who attained the age of superannuation from Jal Shakti Division Baggi on the post of Beldar or Luskar etc. after rendering 10 or 12 years regular service. The date of regularization and the date of retirement was tabulated accordingly, as under:

8. Specifically the case of respondents No. 1 to 4 in the writ petition was that the engagement is purely contractual and the period spent as a daily wage employee is no ‘service’ recognized as a part of qualifying service under the Rules. It is further submitted by them that as per the provisions of CCS (Pension) Rules, only regular service is considered as qualifying service for the purpose of pension and a daily rated service cannot be held at par with the regular service under any stretch of imagination. It is also mentioned that the petitioners stood retired from Government service in the year 2008, whereas the present petition has been filed after the lapse of more than 13 years and thus the petition is liable to be dismissed on the ground of delay and laches.

9. Reply filed on behalf of respondent No. 5 to the writ petition would also go to show that they have rendered more than 10 years of qualifying service and superannuated at the age of 60 years during the year 2008 and their pension cases were forwarded to the office of the replying respondent and they were drawing 50% of last pay drawn at the time of their retirement, as pension.

10. In the rejoinder filed by the present appellants in the writ petition, again there was no reference made to any rule, apart from re-