The Delhi High Court directed the Centre to consider a retired employee’s plea to include his live-in partner of forty years and their children in the Pension Payment Order. Justices Navin Chawla and Madhu Jain said denial was mistaken.
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has instructed the Centre to consider a retired government employee’s request to include the names of his live-in partner of over 40 years and their children in the Pension Payment Order for family pension and healthcare benefits.
A bench comprising Justices Navin Chawla and Madhu Jain determined that the petitioner had not hidden his relationship, and regarding his efforts to add the names of his partner and children as his family as “grave misconduct” to deny post-retirement benefits was a mistake.
The bench subsequently overturned a 2018 order from the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) that upheld the decision to withhold 50 percent of the monthly pension and gratuity for the employee who retired in 2012.
The court stated that,
“We find no legitimate reason for the respondents to permanently withhold 50 percent of the petitioner’s monthly pension and gratuity or for denying family pension to the petitioner’s dependents,”
The court commanded,
“Accordingly, we direct the respondents to release the aforementioned amounts to the petitioner, along with interest on the delayed payments at the rate of 6 percent per annum, from the date they became due until the actual payment date.”
The directed,
“The respondents are further directed to consider the petitioner’s request to include the name of (the partner) and her children in the Pension Payment Order for family pension and CGHS facilities,”
The petitioner, a retired official of the Cabinet Secretariat’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had declared his long standing live-in partner as his spouse in official documents and facilitated the issuance of diplomatic passports for her and their children.
Treating this as serious misconduct, the authorities initiated disciplinary action and imposed pension-related penalties, which were subsequently affirmed by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).
According to the petitioner, after his wife deserted him without agreeing to a divorce, he began living with another woman in 1983, with whom he had two children.
He encountered departmental proceedings for allegedly neglecting his wife and daughter due to his relationship with another woman in 1990, resulting in a penalty that reduced his pay by four stages for four years.
Before his retirement, another disciplinary inquiry was initiated against him in 2011 over claims of misrepresentation while applying for diplomatic passports for his partner and children, leading to the penalty of withholding 50 percent of his monthly pension and gratuity.
The court noted that the petitioner had disclosed the ongoing absence of his wife, as well as his live-in relationship, throughout his career and concluded there was no concealment or malicious intent regarding the diplomatic passports.
It emphasized that the CCS (Pension) Rules allow authorities to withhold or withdraw a pension for cases of “grave misconduct or negligence,” but the petitioner had not engaged in such behavior.
The court stated,
“The record clearly establishes that the petitioner never concealed his relationship. He consistently disclosed the existence of his live-in partner and her children in the service records, identifying her as his wife based on prolonged cohabitation for the purposes of family pension benefits,”
It added.
“Therefore, we are of the opinion that the petitioner maintained transparency at all times with the respondents regarding his relationship and had no mala fide intention to secure diplomatic passports through misrepresentation or by defrauding the Department,”
The court also clarified that the disciplinary authority’s claim that the petitioner lacked personal integrity was erroneous.
Case Title: Birendra Singh Kunwar v. Union of India Through Secretary (R) And Anr