Chennai: The Chennai Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal directed the Southern Railway to take an appropriate decision in six months on the representation of the widow of an employee, seeking family pension.
In the petition, Kanniammal submitted that she is the widow of Subramanian who entered into Railway service as a khalasi in 1974. After two years of service, he was empanelled as a regular employee in 1976 and was repeatedly promoted to end up as an electrical loco foreman in 1982. She alleged that he was ordered to do extraneous and private work for senior officials. After his refusal to oblige, he was removed from service in January, 1990, alleging that he had resigned.
Kanniammal stated that her husband had never done so. Five years later, authorities recalled him and permitted him to rejoin service in a group-D khalasi job. However, authorities continued to harass him and expected him to do private work for senior officials again. After forcefully making him absent from duty from September 16, 1997 to September 8, 1998, the authorities removed him from service on February 20, 2000, on the ground of unauthorised absence. He died in a road accident on April 4, 2001. Her counsel A Abdulla Ahamed submitted that Subramanian had not resigned from service and was regular in attendance.
Kanniammal's petition asking the railways to release his family pension, arrears and provident fund was rejected by the Railways in 2016. Aggrieved at this, she approached the Tribunal.
The railways replied that action was initiated against Subramanian for misconduct and one annual increment was withheld for a year. He had not tendered the minimum 10 years of qualifying service for issue of pension.
Administrative member of CAT R. Ramanujam said that it did not appear fair that the entire service of Subramanian would stand forfeited for pension purposes when he had actually served beyond the minimum requisite period to qualify for pension. The member directed the authorities to take an appropriate decision in six months.
