The Supreme Court bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit, on August 1 concluded hearing the arguments and reserved its judgment in the case of United Bank of India v United Bank of India Retirees Welfare Association & Others. This is an appeal against the Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench judgment, delivered on September 26 last year. The case raises an interesting issue on whether an invidious classification can be made between employees, who retired before November 1, 2002 and those who retired later from the Bank, with respect to payment of dearness relief with their pension.

The employees of the Bank are governed by the United Bank of India (Employees) Pension Regulations, 1995, which are statutory in nature. Under Clause 6 of these Regulations, dearness relief was granted to pensioners at rates which were determined from time to time in tune with the dearness relief formula in operation in the Reserve Bank of India. The RBI issued a circular granting 100 per cent dearness relief to post November 2002 retirees, but no such relief was granted to the prior retirees. The appellant bank adopted this circular, although the RBI extended the benefit of 100 per cent dearness relief to those who had retired pre-November 2002 as well, subsequently.

Both the Single Judge and the Division Bench of the High Court held that there was no intelligible difference between pre-November 2002 retirees and those who retired thereafter; the artificial classification between the retirees was discriminatory

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