The three-year bar on pension arrears is not absolute — and the Head of Office had his own duty to perform

A Division Bench of Justices Anil K. Narendran and Muralee Krishna S. dismisses the State's petition under Article 227, holding that Rule 120 of Part III of the Kerala Service Rules does not absolutely bar arrears beyond three years and that no notice was issued under Rule 115 as it should have been.

A retired government employee applied late for his pension and was told that arrears beyond three years were barred. He had been through cardio-vascular surgery and subsequent treatment in the period when the papers should have been filed, and he produced the hospital records. The Government's order rejecting his claim did not discuss them. It also could not explain why another employee in the same position had been paid. The Kerala Administrative Tribunal ruled for him; the State took it to the High Court under Article 227; and on 6 October 2026 a Division Bench dismissed the petition — by which time he had died.

Which rule applies

The State's case rested on the bar against claiming pension arrears for a period of more than three years. The Bench separated the provisions that actually govern the situation from those that do not.

Rule 135 of Part III of the Kerala Service Rules and Rule 294 under Chapter VII of the Kerala Treasury Rules, it held, are applicable to the case of non-claiming of a sanctioned pension for more than three years without sufficient reason. That was not this case, and those provisions therefore did not apply.

On Rule 120 of Part III, which was the operative provision, the conclusion is stated plainly. Reading Rule 120 together with a Government order produced on the record concerning another, similarly situated employee, “it can only be said that the bar under Rule 120 is not an absolute bar against granting arrears of pension even for a period of more than three years”.

The State had relied on an earlier decision, Pappan, reported at 2021 (2) KLT 774. The Bench found its facts entirely different: there, the delay in submitting the pension papers had arisen from the pendency of a vigilance case against the pensioner — and even then the Court had held that to be a sufficient reason for the delay. The authority, in other words, cut the other way.

Two duties, and only one of them performed

The more interesting part of the judgment is its treatment of fault, because it does not absolve the retiree.

Admittedly, the Head of the Office did not issue any notice to him requiring him to furnish the formal application one year in advance with the relevant documents, as Rule 115 of Part III of the Kerala Service Rules provides. The Bench accepted that a duty also lay on the employee to submit his pension application even without a notice, since he would be aware that he was shortly to retire. “But, the fact remains that the Head of the Office also did not perform his duty.”

Two further features of the Government's own order told against it. The order rejecting his claim for arrears contained no detailed consideration of the medical records he had submitted along with his application — and those records, on the material before the Court, related to treatment in the very period when the application should have been made. And on a Government order pertaining to another similarly situated employee, there was no explanation from the Government's side beyond the statement that the employee concerned had submitted medical records to show the reason for the delay. Which is, of course, precisely what this employee had also done.

The medical material on the record sets the context for the delay. It includes a case summary and discharge record from the department of cardio-vascular and thoracic surgery of a Thiruvananthapuram institute issued in December 2016, a treatment certificate from an Ayurveda hospital dated January 2017, and a further treatment certificate from the same institute dated August 2017. That is the period in which, on the State's case, he should have been assembling and filing his pension papers.

Order

Having considered the pleadings and materials in the light of the authorities, the Bench found “no illegality or impropriety in the impugned order of the Tribunal which warrants interference by exercising supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution of India”.

The original petition was dismissed, leaving the Tribunal's order of 16 December 2024 in the Kerala Administrative Tribunal's original application of 2021 in force.

The cause title records how long this took. The respondent is shown as deceased, and the proceedings continue in the name of the State against a man who had been fighting for arrears of his own pension since at least 2021 — over a delay in paperwork that the rules required his own employer to prompt him about. The arrears now fall to be paid to his legal representatives.