Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 6: In a major service law ruling with far-reaching consequences for Government employees, the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has held that while the administration can lawfully re-fix the pay and pension of employees who were wrongly granted overlapping benefits under two separate SROs, it cannot recover the excess amount already paid to them.
The Division Bench of Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal delivered the verdict in a batch of petitions titled UT of J&K and Others Versus Maqbool Sheikh and connected matters. The court ruled that employees who had already availed the benefit of in-situ promotion under SRO-14 could not continue to enjoy higher scale benefits under SRO-59 as well, holding that both provisions substantially operated in the same field and grant of both amounted to an impermissible double benefit.
In a sharp reversal of the protection granted by the Central Administrative Tribunal to that extent, the High Court made it clear that no employee can claim a vested right in an illegality merely because it continued for years. The Bench upheld the Government’s authority to correct the pay structure and pension by withdrawing the wrongly extended benefit and re-fixing the entitlement in accordance with law.
However, in a major relief for the employees, the Court barred any recovery of the excess amount already paid, noting that the affected persons belonged to Group “C” and Group “D” categories and that recoveries after long years would be harsh, inequitable and legally unsustainable. The Court relied on settled Supreme Court principles protecting lower-category and retired employees from recovery where overpayment occurred due to official error and not because of any fraud or misrepresentation on the part of the employees.
The High Court accordingly directed that no recovery shall be made from the respondents and ordered that any amount already recovered be refunded within the time earlier fixed by the Tribunal. At the same time, it clarified that the Government would remain free to re-fix the pay and pension of the employees by excluding the wrongly granted benefits.
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