Two years after his retirement, Justice Anil Naik has returned to the Bombay High Court, this time as a petitioner.
Says there is discrimination in determining years of service of HC judges for pension benefits
Two years after his retirement, Justice Anil Naik has returned to the Bombay High Court, this time as a petitioner. Naik, presently the chairman of the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT), moved the HC in a writ petition contending that there was an apparent discrimination in determining the years of service of HC judges for the purpose of pension benefits.
However, after having filed his petition almost ten months ago, Naik filed a transfer petition in the Supreme Court - where a similar petition that had been filed by another retired judge of the Bombay HC, Justice Narendra Chapalgaonkar, is pending. After Naik filed his transfer application on September 11, the case is now before the apex court.
“Since the issue involves the pensionary benefits of the HC judges, it was deemed appropriate as a matter of propriety by the petitioner to file a transfer petition in the Supreme Court,” said Naik’s HC counsel, Rui Rodrigues.
Naik stated that judges who are elevated to the HC from a district or sessions court get more number of years added to their qualifying service for pension benefits as opposed to practicing lawyers directly elevated to become judges. Denying the 10-year practice at the Bar towards qualifying service, he said, was discriminatory and unreasonable. This 10-year Bar practice is however extended as weightage to the service of SC judges under the High Court and Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Services) Amendment Act, 2005.
“Although SC judges form a class by themselves, there is still discrimination between judges elevated from district or sessions courts and those elevated from the Bar,” Rodrigues said.
Naik was appointed as a judge in the Bombay HC in January 2001. Prior to that, he was a member of the Bar since 1970. He retired at the age of 62 in October 2005. However, before retirement, he took over as the chairman of MAT.
Moreover, the amendment made with regard to family pension in September 2005, was anomalous in a way that if Naik was eligible for a pension of Rs4,266 every month, in case of his death , his family stood to gain pension three times of what he would get while he was alive.
Naik has therefore urged the court to direct the Union Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs to re-fix the pension after adding a period of 10 years of practice at the Bar as qualifying service and quash the ‘offending provisions’ of the High Court Judge’s (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Act, 1954.
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