The judgment established that recovery of excess pension amount from a widow, who had agreed to return any excess amount received, was justified, and the State was entitled to recover the amount.

Judgment

Mr. Jasgurpreet Singh Puri, J.

The present petition has been filed under Articles 226/227 of the Constitution of India seeking issuance of a writ in the nature of Mandamus for directing the respondents to pay arrears i.e.the pension of the petitioner from the month of August 2021 to the month of October 2022 alongwith interest.

2. The brief facts of the present case are that the husband of the petitioner was working as Leading Fireman in the office of respondent No.3. Unfortunately the husband of the petitioner died on 25.12.2003 in a road accident while he was in service. Thereafter, the petitioner being the widow was given the pension and pensionary benefits and she started receiving family pension from 26.12.2003 well in time.

3. The grant of family pension is governed by the Family Pension Scheme, 1964 which has been so attached at Annexure R-2 with the reply filed by respondents No.1 and 2 and as per Rule 2(a) of the aforesaid Scheme, in respect of Government employees who die in harness, family pension shall be admissible for the date following the date of completion of period of financial assistance as per Haryana Compassionate Assistance to the Dependents of Deceased Government Employees Rules, 2006 and the family pension is payable at enhanced rate of 50% of pay for 07 years subject to fulfilment of condition of minimum 07 years service at the time of death. Thereafter the family shall be entitled to family pension at the rate of 30% of the pay. The aforesaid Rule 2(a) is reproduced as under:-

“2 (a) In respect of Government employees who die in harness, family pension shall be admissible from the date following the date of completion of period of financial assistance as per Haryana Compassionate Assistance to the Dependents of Deceased Government Employees Rules, 2006. The family pension shall be payable at enhanced rate of 50% of pay for 07 years subject to fulfillment of condition of minimum 7 years service at the time of death [see rule 9.23(a) (ii)]. Thereafter, the family shall be entitled to family pension at the rate of 30% of pay.”

4. In this way the petitioner being family pensioner was entitled for enhanced rate of 50% for 07 years after the death of her husband i.e. till 25.12.2010. However, later on the aforesaid Policy/Scheme was amended by way of a notification dated 17.04.2009 in which the aforesaid period of 07 years was extended to 10 years. Thereafter as per the aforesaid Family Pension Scheme, the petitioner was entitled for enhanced family pension @ 50% till 25.12.2013. Till the aforesaid date i.e.25.12.2013, undisputedly, the petitioner was getting the aforesaid family pension @ 50% and there is no dispute with this regard in the present petition. However, as per the aforesaid policy after a period of 10 years the aforesaid family pension was to be fixed @ 30% of the pay but the petitioner continued to get the aforesaid family pension @ 50% till July 2021 i.e. for another about 08 years but this mistake was never detected either by department or by any audit department etc. but the petitioner being widow also did not know as to what were the rules and what was the amendment made etc. and therefore she kept on getting the aforesaid amount till July 2021 i.e.when the mistake was ultimately detected. On the detection of the mistake by respondent authorities, they stopped the total family pension of the petitioner and in this way the petitioner was not paid any pension at all from July 2021 onwards for a further period of 15 months. Thereafter, the family pension of the petitioner was refixed in November 2022 wherein an amount of Rs.9000/- was decided to be deducted for a period of 39 months from the family pension of the petitioner and she has now challenged the aforesaid recovery in the present petition on the ground that since the husband of the petitioner was a Class-III employee, as such no recovery could have been effected from the petitioner who is the widow of the employee in view of t