In High Court

The amount due to pensioners who have expired after January 1, 1996, will go to their legal heirs. The court direction comes in the wake of a group of petitions filed by pensioners like Anant Sadashiv Ghangurde. His letter to the chief justice was converted into a suo moto petition. According to the petitioners, the government cannot deny them pension arrears, especially if it has agreed tothe Fifth Pay Commission recommendations.

During the last hearing, Additional Solicitor General Dhananjay Chandrachud had sought time to seek instructions from the government. Today he presented a letter to the courtin which state Finance Secretary Ravi Buddhiraja has agreed to pay the arrears in five instalments. He had earlier argued that it was difficult to allocate such a huge amount for the arrears.

But the petitioners objected to the proposal, since the pensioners above 70 years could not wait for so long. As a result, Chandrachud said the court should issue a ruling on this issue. The court ordered three equal instalments in the next three financial years.

The Maharashtra Pensioners8217; Association and the Thane District Pensioners8217; Association joined the petitioners as intervenors.

State to study consumer courts

The Bombay High Court today directed the state government to look into the functioning of the consumer courts and submit a report by September 21. The direction comes in the wake of a petition filed by the President of the Consumer Protection Society of India, N B Karmaran. A letter written by him to the chief justice of the Bombay High Court was suo moto converted a petition. He pointed tothe pathetic working conditions of the consumer courts, ranging from inadequate staff to chronic absenteeism of presiding members. A similar petition has been filed in the high court which throws light on the malfunctioning of the consumer courts, especially since it defeats the cause for which they were set up.

As per the petition, in the Maharashtra district forum, of the 2.7 lakh cases which have been filed, only 64,507 disputes were disposed of in 90 days. As per the Consumer Protection Act, every case should reach its logical end within 90 days. The petitioner has pointed out the ill-equipped nature of the forums. Due to shortage of staff, staffers are borrowed from other government departments. As a result, these staffers merely sign and leave. Even the presiding members do not follow the working hours.

Surprisingly, it is found that many state forums do not have a bank account, although all state governments allocate Rs 50 lakh for every state forum and Rs 10 lakh for every district forum, yearly.The court was surprised to see that the forums had not availed of these funds. The Advocate General C J Sawant was directed to find out why these forums do not have a single bank account. It was also pointed out that some forums are situated in residential flats. For instance, one has to encounter an embarrassing clothesline of undergarments while entering the Dadar forum.

Plea on birthdate dismissed

A division bench of Justice M B Ghodeswar and Justice S Radhakrishnan today dismissed a petition filed by a BMC officer, G Y Mane, director, special engineering, in which he had sought judicial intervention to set right his birthdate that he claimed had been wrongly entered in the records. The bench however held that the petition had come in too late, since the petitioner, was aware of a circular in 1986 whereby the officers were asked to make representations if they wanted to make any change in their birthdates.

Mane, who is to retire on August 31, 1999, was first served a notice on March 5, 1999saying that he would be reaching the age of superannuation in August. He then made a representation to the additional municipal commissioner, who rejected it on May 24, 1999. While the records show that Mane was born on August 5, 1941, it was his contention that he was actually born on March, 20, 1943.

At the court today, Justice Ghodeswar enquired of the counsel for Mane, Virendra Tulzapurkar the reasons for the delay in coming to court when his application was rejected in May. The counsel could not give any satisfactory answer. According to the petitioner, he was born in Dahigaon, taluka Malsiras in Sholapur where the Local Board Shala recorded his birthdate wrongly as August 5, 1941. It was not till 1981, that the petitioner realised that his birthdate was wrongly recorded.

In that year itself, he was able to obtain a certificate from the tehsildar where his birthdate was duly registered as March, 20, 1942. Tulzapurkar argued that his client was told that he could wait till the notice of hissuperannuation was served on him to make representations on his birthdate.However, the bench rejected the petition finding it lacking in merit.Newsline reports