Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi

Udupi, Feb 13: An 80-year-old senior citizen has been struggling to get full payment of his rightful pension from the education department, 21 years after his retirement. The incident has been brought out by the Human Rights Protection Goundation of Udupi.

Sharing details with the media about the case Dr Ravindranath Shanbouge, president, Human Rights Protection Foundation said, “Raghupathi Bhat, a resident of Alevoor was working in an aided pre-university college as a principal from where he retired in 2002 after serving for nearly 33 years. He had requested the college management three months before his retirement to send all the documents required for sanctioning his pension to the concerned department. However, due to the negligence of the management board as well as that of the education department, his pension never got sanctioned for 15 years."

He said, "Professor Bhat had to fight a long legal battle from the District Court right up to the Supreme Court of India. Finally on the basis of the Supreme Court order, 177 months of pension arrears were paid to him on October 17, 2017 as one lumpsum amount. But the department did not include interest arrears of the 15 years for the late payment. In a communication given by officials of the pension department, they added a note. 'We have given the pension arrears. However, for the payment of interest you may please approach the government'."

For almost two years, he dashed off a number of letters right from the director of the PUE Board to the secretary of the education department, but there was no response from anyone.

Undeterred, Professor Bhat approached the High Court again in 2019. After 18-months of hearing, the Court ruled that 8% interest for the pension arrears has to be paid. It also imposed a deadline of four weeks for the payment of interest. The government was also directed by the court to recover this amount from those responsible for the delay.

“The High Court's order to pay interest on delay in pension payment was not obeyed for at least another nine months. The officials did not reply to Bhat's letter either in this regard. So, a contempt of court suit was filed. Now the government prosecutor who appeared in the court asked for a period of another weeks to get approval from the Ministry of Finance as the officials of various departments were working on this.

The High Court gave permission to this. Since the three-week deadline given by the High Court has not been obeyed even after ten months, a 'memo' was submitted to the Court on October 4, 2022. Now that the officials of the education department were convinced that an arrest warrant would follow, the department calculated in its 'own way' and deposited less than half of the amount that was due to the Professor in his account. They also filed a false affidavit that the court order was obeyed,” said Dr Shanbouge.

He also said that “Government has announced a policy that the pension should be paid to the elderly in their next month of retirement, shouldn't the officials adhere to it? Firstly, payment of his pension was delayed by 177 months. Even though the court ordered to pay 8% interest on the delayed payment of the pension, the interest due on the arrears was paid only after 63 months. Even though that was only half of the total amount, surprisingly an affidavit was filed in the court that the court order has been obeyed. This injustice also has been brought to the notice of the Court. Should the 80-year-old Raghupathi Bhat continue to fight this case until his last breath?” he questioned.

Speaking with the media, Prof Raghupathi Bhat, retired principal and the victim said, “I want the rightful pension to be given to me at the earliest, I can’t explain the sufferings I have undergone due to the unavailability of my pension at the right time. My daughter was an intelligent student, but I could not provide her with the good education she wanted due to my financial woes. I was not even able to provide good medical treatment for my wife due to which I lost her in 2011. My request to the government is to provide my rightful pension amount.”

(with inputs from media release)