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1. The applicants have filed instant O.A under Section 19 of the Central Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 seeking following relief:

(I) For issuance of an appropriate order or direction to the respondents to grant the applicant pension as per the provisions of CCS MANDEEP SINGH MANDEEP SINGH (Pension) Rules, 1972 by taking into account his entire service as Gramin Dak Sevaks at par with other regular Postal Department's Group 'D' Personnel in view of the judgement dated 09.12.2014 (Annexure A-2) passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Writ petition (Civil) No. 17/2009 case titled as (Vinod Kumar Saxena & Ors. Vs Union of India & Ors.) as well as order dated 17.11.2016 (Annexure A-3) passed by the Principal Bench of this Tribunal in OA No. 749 of 2015 and other similar cases.

2. The brief facts of the case are the applicant was appointed as Gramin Dak Sevak Branch Post Master (GDS BPM) at Branch Office Kotli Sabo under Sub Post Office Sangat Division, Bathinda, Punjab Circle on 26.04.1979, and subsequently an appointment letter dated 11.01.1991 was issued to him. Since the year 1979, the applicant has been continuously discharging his duties as GDS BPM and has been distributing postal articles in two villages assigned to him. Apart from this, the applicant has also been entrusted with additional responsibilities including handling Savings Accounts, Recurring Deposits (RDs), Time Deposits (TDRs), Postal Life Insurance (PLI), MGNREGA related work and other MANDEEP SINGH MANDEEP SINGH departmental duties, which he has been performing diligently and efficiently without any blemish in his service record.

However, the respondents have neither decided the said representation nor granted the benefit of pension to the applicant till date.

MANDEEP SINGH MANDEEP SINGH

5. It is further submitted that the applicant has attained the age of superannuation and was retired on 28.02.2019. The financial condition of the applicant is extremely poor as his wife is suffering from serious health problems and his 40-year-old daughter is 100% mentally challenged, due to which the applicant is solely responsible for taking care of the family and meeting their medical and daily expenses. Despite the long and unblemished service rendered by the applicant, the respondents have failed to grant him the benefit of pension, which has caused grave hardship and injustice to the applicant.

20. D.S. Nakara has been relied upon on behalf of the respondents in support of their contention that there cannot be any artificial discrimination between two groups of pensioners. But the factual context of the case of D.S. Nakara is different. The discrimination which was challenged in that case related to two sets of retired Armed Forces personnel who were categorised on the basis of their dates of retirement and one set had better terms of pension. The decisions in P.K. Rajamma and Chet Ram are for the proposition that the respondents held civil posts as GDS and were government servants. But again ratio of these authorities cannot be applied to combine the services rendered by GDSs in posts guided by an altogether different service rule with their services in regular employment. The other authority on which reliance has been placed on behalf of the respondents is a judgment of this Court delivered on 23-8-2017 in Habib Khan v. State of Uttarakhand. That case arose out of a similar dispute involving a work-charged employee of the State of Uttarakhand who wanted his service in that capacity counted for computing the qualifying service in regular post on the question of grant of pension. This judgment was also delivered by a two-Judge Bench of which Hon'ble Justice Ranjan Gogoi, before his Lordship assumed the post of Chief Justice of India, was a member. The aforesaid decision followed an earlier judgment of this Court delivered in Punjab SEB v. Narata Singh. The latter case arose out of similar claims of work-charged employees who were engaged in the Irrigation and Power Department of the State of Punjab. The relevant provision of the Punjab Civil Services Rules allowed MANDEEP SINGH MANDEEP SINGH temporary or officiating service under the State Government without interruption followed by confirmation in the same or another post to be counted in full as qualifying service but excluded the period of service in work-charged establishment. The aforesaid Rule was struck down by the Full Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The decision of this Court in Narata Singh was however founded on two circulars which permitted counting the period of service rendered by a work- charged employee in the Central Government or the State Government for the purpose of computing pensionary benefits as an employee of the Punjab State Electricity Board. The respondents in these appeals also cannot be held to be work- charged employees. The said category of employees i.e. work-charged employees are engaged against specific work and their pay and allowances are chargeable to such work. But the scope of respondents' work as GDS was part-time in nature. They had the liberty to engage themselves in other vocations, though the work they involved in carried an element of permanency. The fact that they were engaged as GDSs which constituted civil posts cannot by implication treat their service having whole-time characteristic to be an extension of their service rendered in the capacity of GDSs. The subsequent service was guided by different service rules having different employment characteristics. The selection of an employee in regular post cannot also be pre-dated because of delay on the part of the authorities in holding the selection process. We do not agree with the view of the High Court on this count in judgments which form subject of appeal in Civil Appeal No. 5008 of 2016, SLP (C) No. 16767 of 2016, Civil Appeal No. 8379 of 2016 and Civil Appeal No. 10801 of 2016. Service tenure of an employee in a particular post cannot be artificially extended in that manner in the absence of any specific legal provision.