Madras High Court Bench asks Registrar General to ensure former ACJ's daughter gets family pension

The Hindu

3 days ago

Pension has always been characterised as a matter of right and not charity or bounty. When it comes to extending the benefit to persons with intellectual disability, the authority must exhibit alacrity, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has observed.
A Division Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and K. Rajasekar held that the son/daughter of a pensioner who was a person with intellectual disability and fell within the scope of the pension rules should be disbursed with family pension on submission of a medical certificate evidencing his/her incapacity to earn livelihood without insisting on certificate denoting income from all sources.
The sanction order should be passed without delay after documents mentioned in the statutory rules were submitted, the court observed while hearing the appeal preferred by the Principal Accountant General (A&E) against a Single Bench order, directing payment of family pension to a person with intellectual disability who was the son of a deceased government employee.
The court was told that the order had been complied with. However, the appellant wanted certain strong remarks to be expunged, and the court expunged them.
The court observed that at this juncture it was reminded of the daughter of one of the distinguished judges of the HC, who retired as its Acting Chief Justice. It was agonising to note that his daughter, a person with physical and intellectual disability, had not been sanctioned family pension even though more than a year had passed since her mother's demise.
Her father passed away in 2020 and mother in 2024. Application for sanctioning family pension was submitted. The office of the appellant sought certain details and documents. It was furnished by her younger sister, the legal guardian.
The admissibility report for family pension was forwarded to the Secretary of Ministry of Law and Justice (Department of Justice) to obtain sanction from the President of India. Subsequently, a letter sought submission of the same set of documents, and the matter lay there, the court observed.
'We call upon the Registrar General of the Madras HC to liaison with the authorities concerned and ensure that the daughter of the former ACJ gets her family pension at the earliest,' the court directed.
Referring to Rule 54(6) of CCS (Pension) Rules and Rule 49(6) of the Tamil Nadu Pension Rules, the court said a medical officer not below the rank of a civil surgeon must give a certificate setting out the mental or physical condition of the child. Nowhere was there any requirement to produce an income certificate noting income from all sources. In the present case, the appellant had insisted on furnishing such a certificate, the court observed.
When the statutory rule itself contemplated certificates only from a Doctor/Medical Board stating that the son/daughter of a deceased employee by virtue of physical or intellectual disability could not earn a livelihood, the authority could not ask for anything more, the court observed.