JUDGMENT

Suffian J:

I had some difficulty in deciding from the pleadings alone what it is I am asked to declare but during the course of the hearing it became clear that what I am asked to declare is this, that if before a public officer retires on a pension he opted to draw a gratuity (followed by a reduced monthly pension) then he may be paid the reduced pension only during the period of ten years immediately following his retirement but after the expiration of that period he should be paid his full pension.

The admitted facts are that the plaintiffs and several persons on whose behalf they sue were members of the public service and at different dates retired from various services on pensions which under the present constitutional arrangements are a liability of the Federal Government.

They became eligible for pensions according to the scale fixed by paragraph five of the Pensions Regulations 1951 subject to s. 11 of the Pensions Ordinance, 1951. When retiring, each of them was offered and paid in lieu of the full pension (a) a reduced pension for life at the rate of 'be of his full pension and (b) a lump sum gratuity equal to ten times the value of the surrendered portion of h