7th Pay Commission: Government employees furious as pension age slashed, threaten protests if govt does help

7th Pay Commission: When most of the state governments are striving hard to placate their employees by increasing their dearness allowances or implementing the benefits of 7th Pay Commission, some state employees in Uttar Pradesh suffered a shocking jolt following the latest observation of Allahabad High Court, which ordered that the 2001 notification by the state government to increase retirement age of employees was invalid. It literally sent shock waves through the government corridors and made everyone scramble to understand what the fallout or its impact will be on pensions of the employees.   

President of state employees joint council of Uttar Pradesh, SP Tiwari, has urged the UP government to take a decision in this regard in upcoming state assembly session. He said that this court observation will hit a lot of state government staff who are of 58 or 59 years of age. Such employees are in a dilemma of being retired all of a sudden. 
 
Following the recent court observation, state employees have threatened to take big action unless the Yogi government makes it's stand clear on the court directive, otherwise they will stage protests.
 
The High Court has termed the Governor's notification of November 28, 2001 as invalid, observing that retirement age of employees cannot be increased through such a notification, while making it clear that Fundamental Rule 56 is a legislative rule, which can be amended only through a legislature. 
 
Under Article 309 of Indian Constitution, Governor using the power through notification to amend Rule 56 for increasing employees' retirement age from 58 to 60 years cannot be done. In the eye of the law, the HC said, this is not deemed to be an amendment in Rule 56, therefore, employees' retirement age is still 58 years not 60 years.   
 
The HC bench comprising Justice Ifaqat Ali Khan and Justice Sudhir Agrawal rejected the petition of one Om Prakash Tiwari, Assistant Architect, Bhadohi Industrial Development Authority. The bench said that legislative rules can be amended only through legislative procedure. The court made it clear that retirement age of employees is still 58 years.
 
The petitioner had submitted that since retirement age of the state employees has been increased from 58 to 60 years, therefore, he should also retire at 60 years.     
  
On the contrary, the Uttar Pradesh government in May 2018 had raised the retirement age of employees in group C and D, in a cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The cabinet had cleared the proposal to raise the retirement age from existing 60 years to 62 years. Notably, most of the state employees are getting pay as per the 7th Pay Commission recommendations.    
 
Earlier this year, Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, however, had said that there was no plan to raise the retirement age of central government employees from existing 60 years to 62 years. Notably, there are about 48.41 lakh Central government employees.