The Supreme Court in the case The Secretary to Government and another vs PG Venugopal observed and has imposed an exemplary cost of Rupees 5 lakhs on the State of Tamil Nadu for filing of an unnecessary Special Leave Petition.
The bench comprising of Justice MR Shah and the Justice Krishna Murari observed and has held that it is required to be noted that as such the State ought not to have filed the present Special Leave Petition. Despite the fact that the issue with respect to entitlement of pension by the respondent was concluded up to this Court, thereafter, still the state had an audacity to contend that the respondent was not entitled for the pension.
However, the present issue is related to the pensionary entitlement of an employee. In an earlier round of litigation, it has been confirmed by the Supreme Court the pensionary entitlement of the employee. It stated that when the stage for disbursing the arrears came, the State took up a plea that the employee was not entitled to pension. By its judgement in February 2022, the Madras High Court rejected the State’s contention wherein observing that the Department “has misappropriated the money of the employee by depriving him of his pension”.
The High Court division bench observed that the act of the appellants in not granting arrears of pension from 01.04.2009 is arbitrary. Once the entitlement of pension of the employee is decided and the appellants are bound to pay the same. Thus, challenging the same, the State approached the Supreme Court, which took an extremely critical view of the State’s conduct.
It was observed by the Supreme Court that once the issue was concluded up to this court that the respondent is entitled to pension, thereafter, it was not open for the State to again contend post 2009 when the arrears were to be paid that the respondent is not entitled for the pension. Therefore, the aforesaid stand is just in teeth of order passed by this Court. In light of the matter, there is no substance in the present Special Leave Petition, the same deserves to be dismissed and is accordingly dismissed with an exemplary cost, which is quantified at Rs. 5,00,000/-.
The court stated that the cost of Rs. 5,00,000/-, to be deposited by the State within a period of four weeks from September 19 with the Registry of the Supreme Court and on such deposit and the same is to be transferred to the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee (MCPC), Supreme Court of India.
