In what comes as major relief to hundreds of retired employees of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC), the Madras High Court Bench here has directed the State Government to ensure that terminal benefits due to all eligible former employees were paid in 12 equated monthly instalments without expecting them to file individual writ petitions and obtain court orders in favour of them.
Justice T. Raja gave the direction while passing common orders on a batch of 31 writ petitions filed by former bus drivers, conductors and other staff of various divisions of TNSTC in Madurai, Tirunelveli, Kumbakonam, Tiruchi, Karaikudi and Dindigul regions seeking a direction to disburse their earned leave salary, provident fund, gratuity and so on along with interest for delayed payment.
“It is very unfair on the part of the Corporation to routinely leave their retiring employees in lurch and to disburse their terminal benefits only after those employees get an order from the court... ,” the judge said.
He pointed out that it was the First Division Bench of the High Court, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice S. Manikumar, which had first ordered for payment of terminal benefits to a batch of 75 former employees of TNSTC in 12 EMIs along with interest at the rate of six per cent per annum and also fixed interest at 18 per cent if there was further delay in making the payment.
TNSTC did not implement the order with respect to other employees too who were not part of the batch of 75 writ appeals disposed of by the court on June 12 last.
This forced every other retired employee to file individual writ petitions in the High Court spending their valuable time, money and energy and obtain individual orders from single judges on the lines of the order passed by the First Bench.
Filing of such individual writ petitions also led to monetary loss for the cash strapped TNSTC too since it had to pay lawyer’s fee for the appearance of its counsel in every other writ petition. Observing that it was unnecessary to expect individuals to file writ petitions and obtain similar orders to receive their statutory entitlements, the judge said such insistence was against a dictum laid down way back in 2010.
“This court, in C. Eswaran’s case, has clearly held that once an issue is decided in favour of a group of persons, there is no point in waiting for each and every similarly placed persons to file petitions and pray for the same relief. As held by the Supreme Court, the benefit of such judgement is equally applicable to similarly placed persons to do complete and substantial justice,” Mr. Justice Raja concluded.
