Updated on: Friday, January 06, 2012
The State Government has to extend benefits, due to 150 retired teachers, within a period of eight months as per the direction of the Madras high court bench.Justice T.Raja was disposing of a batch of writ petitions filed by 150 retired teachers claiming that they were not given due scale of pay till their superannuation.
The petitioners were originally appointed as Secondary Grade Assistant/Secondary Grade teachers/Physical Education Teachers. Some of them, even till retirement, had not been given promotion. However,they were given the benefit of selection grade and special grade after completion of 10 years and 20 years of their respective services.
The petitioners grievance was that they were not given benefit of scale of pay of selection grade and special grade as per instructions given in two government orders of 1993 and 2010.
The Judge pointed out that the Chief Educational Officers of Pudukkottai, Vilupuram and Salem had extended the benefit to all the similarly placed persons.
"when the Tamil Administrative Tribunal has given a direction to the authorities to refix the scale of pay of the applicants, the High court has also categorically issued a direction and as against that, a special leave petition filed by the State also came to be dismissed", the judge said while Narrating the legal dispute that was settled by various forums.
The court held that the authorities are directed to extend the benefit of GOs to all the petitioners on receipt of their detailed representations comprisng their service particulars.
Since all the petitioners were senior citizens, on receipt of their inpidual applications with full details of their date of reaching selection and special Grade, date of retirement, the authorities are directed to dispose of their applications by extending the mentioned benefits within six months from the date of receipt of their applications enclosed with the order copy, the court held.
However, K.Chellapandian, Additional Advocate General, sought a year's time to disburse the amount by mentioning the financial problem faced by the department.
Opposing this, R.Singgaravelan, counsel for the petitioners said the petitioners had already retired from service and are senior citizens and so six months time could be reasonable for fixation of the amount.
The Court, after considering the arguments of the two sides, directed the state to extend the benefits to the petitioners within eight months from the date of receipt of their applications.