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71. The Court noted that average emoluments of 36 months' service .

provided the measure of pension because the pension was related to the average emoluments during 36 months just preceding retirement; that by the liberalized scheme, it is now reduced to average emoluments of 10 months preceding the date; any one in Government service would appreciate at a glance that with an average of 10 months, it would be on the higher side on account of the two fortuitous circumstances that the pay- scales, if one has not reached the maximum, permit annual increments and there are promotions in the last one or two years.

72. With a view to giving a higher average, the scheme was liberalised to provide for average emoluments with reference to last 10 months' service.

Coupled with it, a slab system for computation is introduced and the ceiling is raised. This is liberalisation.

73. Now, if the pensioners who retired prior to the specified date had to earn pension on the average emoluments of 36 months' salary just preceding the date of retirement, naturally the average would be lower and they will be doubly hit because the slab system as now introduced was not available and the ceiling was at a lower level. Thus they suffer triple jeopardy, viz., lower average emoluments, absence of slab system and lower ceiling.

77. If this be the underlying intendment of liberalization of pension scheme, can any one be bold enough to assert that it was good enough only for those who would retire subsequent to the specified date, but those who had already retired did not suffer the pangs of rising prices and falling purchasing power of the rupee. Earlier the scheme was not that liberal keeping in view the definition of average emoluments and the absence of slab system and a lower ceiling. Those who rendered the same service earned less pension and are exposed to the vagary of rising prices consequent upon the inflationary inputs. If therefore, those who are to retire subsequent to the specified date would feel the pangs in their old age, of lack of adequate security, by what stretch of imagination the same can be denied to those who retired earlier with lower emoluments and yet are exposed to the vagaries of the rising prices and the falling purchasing power of the rupee.