Officers/officials responsible for delay in payment of pension and other post-retirement benefits are liable to pay interest and costs.

V.K.Bali, J.

1. The most over-powering ambition of youngsters groping around for a place in the world is to join the coveted ranks of the employed. They live their lives dreaming about future and what it would hold for them and do all that can to shape their vision into reality. The wish of joining service and in particular Government service turns into a concrete reality for too few a person. However, when this dream does come true, there is jubilation. Parents heave a sigh of relief. Families get bread winners. Years of education seem justified. However, while the incumbent looks towards the stars and aims towards the sky thinking about the vast stretch of life lying ahead, in the Court, practical and impersonal columns of law and service rules, his and has already been decided, the date of his superannuation stamped against his name end his pension is fixed. As and when dreaded hour of superannuation draws closer, the employee spends the last leg of his career looking forward to a life of rest and resign himself to earning a third of his salary for the test of his living years. Little does he realise that the end of a chapter is the beginning of a tale of woes. The pension and post retiral benefits on which rests the confidence and dignity with which one expects to live ones retired life begin to prove elusive. The entire set of officials, departments and clerks begin to shuffle acros the papers with regard to pension of a person from one table to another. A few tantalising glimpses and one has to repeatedly and without success go through an entire maze of procedures and complaints. Every morning brings a ray of hope and every evening it is dashed to the ground. Retirement becomes a physical and mental torture. It becomes difficult to believe that even though the day a person joins service, his retirement has already been worked out to the minutest of details yet it is only when the day ultimately dawns that some movement is noticed in the corridors of officials who have been assigned the duty to work out pension and not earlier. Although the pension, gratuity and other post retiral benefits that a person is entitled to are not only known to the person concerned but also on account of crystal clear Rules framed by the Government even to those who have to work out the same yet it is strange that no efforts are made till such time the person actually retires. The channel to provide pension and other benefits works at the pace of a snail-the giving hand becomes practically paralysed. A person who has to live after retirement only on the truncated source of income that he is to get from the Government for obvious reasons gets insecure, panicky and shocked at the apathy meted out to him by the very organisation of which he was a part till recently.

2. Is it not an insult to human dignity that a person is virtually made to go from door to door and beg for what is virtually his and should naturally come to him?

3. Is it not that the very system which takes decision of pension and retirement by not adhering to its own decision renders the system itself to a mockery. If so, is it not that those who render the whole system to ridicule deserve some harsh treatment?

4. In the context of aforesaid two questions, we have to decide the present bunch of Writ Petitions in which the proverbial delay of the Government in giving pension to a retired person has been criticised.

5. The two questions framed above need an answer as demanded by the petitioners. The third question that has not been canvassed but which too is agitating our mind is as to whether it is the Government which should be made to pay the penalty by way of interest or costs or both or the blame should be foisted upon the officers/ officials who, on account of raising insignificant and frivolous objections get the matter delayed beyond measures. Obviously, the third question posed by us to ourselves would be gone into only if the first two questions are determined in f