The effective date for pension benefits based on financial constraints does not violate constitutional rights.

JUDGMENT

1. Rule. Rule is made returnable forthwith. With the consent of the learned counsel appearing for the parties, the petitions are taken up for final disposal at the stage of admission.

2. These two writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India , being Writ Petition No.56 of 2026 and Writ Petition No.65 of 2026, raise a common challenge and hence are heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

3. The petitioners are medical officers who served under the Zilla Parishad set-up and retired upon attaining the age of superannuation, one on 30.06.2018 and the other on 31.07.2018. It is not in dispute that the 7^th Pay Commission benefits were extended to them for the purpose of pay fixation during service and for revision of pensionary benefits after retirement. The dispute is confined to the non-practicing allowance (NPA) at the rate of 35%, which, according to the petitioners, ought to be reckoned for the purpose of their revised pension with effect from 01.01.2016, i.e., the date from which the 7^th Pay Commission is stated to have been implemented. The petitioners assail the action of respondent No. 2 to the extent it denies them 35% NPA in the computation of retiral benefits and further seek a declaration that the stipulation contained in clause (2) of the Government Resolution dated 14.10.2024, whereby the State extended the benefit of 35% NPA to medical officers but fixed the effective date as 01.01.2019, is illegal, discriminatory, and unconstitutional. The consequential relief sought is to direct respondent Nos. 1 and 2 to grant the benefit of that Government Resolution from 01.01.2016, modify the said clause (2), and revise the petitioners’ pensionary benefits by reckoning 35% NPA with interest from the date of their retirement.

4. Learned advocate for the petitioners submitted that once the State has adopted the 7^th Pay Commission benefits from 01.01.2016, the petitioners, who were admittedly in service on that date and retired thereafter (though prior to 01.01.2019), form part of the same homogeneous class of “7th Pay Commission retirees”, and therefore denial of NPA for the period 01.01.2016 to 31.12.2018 amounts to hostile discrimination offending Article 14 of the Constitution of India . It was urged that the Government Resolution dated 14.10.2024 merely acknowledges the entitlement of medical officers to NPA at 35% and the State has no rational basis to postpone it to 01.01.2019 when the foundational event for revision and implementation of the 7^th Pay Commission commenced on 01.01.2016. The petitioners further relied on an instance of one similarly placed co-employee, Prabhakar Ramdas Pawar, who retired in 2019 and is stated to have received pension revised by including 35% NPA, to contend that the petitioners are identically circumstanced and ought not be treated differently merely because they retired before 01.01.2019.

5. Per contra, the learned AGP appearing for the State opposed the petitions and submitted that fixation of an effective date in a fiscal/service-benefits policy is within the executive domain. He further argued that the Government Resolution dated 14.10.2024 expressly makes the extension of 35% NPA operative from 01.01.2019 and does not confer any retrospective entitlement to the retired employees prior to the cut-off date. According to the learned AGP, the persons who retired prior to the operative date constitute a distinct class from those who retired on or after that date and thus there is no vested or accrued right in the petitioners to demand that a later policy be applied retrospectively. He further argued that the Court, in exercise of judicial review