ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court held that delay of any kind to claim pensionary benefits should not be counted as to one of the disentitlements, especially for pensionary claims.
“The pensionary benefits after retirement devolved upon a civil servant soon after his/her resignation followed by its acceptance and the formal application was only required to keep the record streamlined. The delay of any kind to claim pensionary benefits should not be counted as to one of the disentitlements, especially for pensionary claims,” said the judgment, authored by Justice Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui.
“Neither the principle of laches would apply nor any provision of the Limitation Act would come as an obstacle to decline the claim of pensionary benefits,” it added.
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A three-member bench of SC, headed by Justice Naeem Akhter Afghan and comprising Justice Shafi Siddiqui and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb ruled that against the order of the Federal Service Tribunal, Islamabad passed on 03.07.2024.
It said; “the jurisprudence establishes with clarity that pension is a vested, constitutional right and not a bounty or given out of generosity by the employer. The employee earns these benefits through his/her long, continuous, faithful and unblemished service.”
The petitioner, a former civil servant, had served for respondents – Ministry of Finance and Military Accountant General, Rawalpindi. He completed more than twenty years of service qualifying for pension at the time of resignation. In September, 2007 he tendered resignation. However, he moved the department for the first time to claim pensionary benefits in 2020, that is, after a lapse of 13 years of tendering resignation, which was later accepted.
According to the judgment, the department dismissed the petitioner’s application on 27.10.2020 with this view that the qualifying length of service for pensionary benefits was twenty-five years. The petitioner then approached the Federal Service Tribunal, which also dismissed his application as to why he slept over his rights for such a long period.
The Additional Attorney General before the Supreme Court opposed the grant of pensionary benefits to the petitioner on two counts: (i) that the petitioner has belatedly applied for the pension claim; and (ii) that since he has tendered resignation on his own from public service, therefore, regulation 418 of the CSR would disentitle him for such claim.
The Court noted that the petitioner for the purposes of his pensionary benefits was required to have served for a period of twenty years; as the relevant clause (i) to sub-section (1) of section 13 of the Civil Servants Act, 1973, was amended by virtue of Ordinance No.XXXIV of 2001 on 04.08.2001, whereby the period of twenty-five years was substituted with twenty years.
The SC judgment noted that the Tribunal has failed to lay down reference of any law, which would disentitle the petitioner’s claim for pension after the requisite period. The pensionary benefits after retirement devolved upon a civil servant soon after his/her resignation followed by its acceptance and the formal application was only required to keep the record streamlined.
It said that the Tribunal and the departmental authority have failed to understand the spirit of regulation 418 of the CSR and also that the belated application to claim pensionary benefits is not a disentitlement. It noted that the understanding of the Regulation 418 of the CSR as an independent application to oust a civil servant from a contest to claim pensionary benefits on successful completion of requisite length of service would be misconceived and legally untenable in the eye of law.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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