My understanding of the approval, by the Union Cabinet yesterday, of "ONE RANK ONE PENSION" for armed forces employees and ex-servicemen organisation employees is that upgradation of pension has been approved for them. With this move, it would be unfair to deny such a benefit to RBI employees. It has been reported that there is now a better understanding between the FM and the Governor. The present FM is a very intelligent person and no IAS official, however brilliant he/she may be, can boast of a better intellectual equipment than that of the FM. In fact, the minor criticism some times levelled against the FM is that he doubles as his Under Secretary in that he goes into minutest details of each and every case. If we wish to be more charitable to him, we would have to readily concede and appreciate that he has eye for details without missing the macroeconomic and big picture. He cannot be taken for a ride by any bureaucrat. Our Governor is a highly accomplished person (his academic achievements are such that all of us can be proud of-- Gold medallist in IIT, First rank in IAS besides being a Ph.d) and would have known all the details of our Pension case. If he takes an appointment with the FM exclusively for the Pension case and presents the case before the FM, I have no doubt that the FM would be sympathetic to our case and approve the proposal. The present FM is not one who would be simply guided by his ministry bureaucrats and has the courage and conviction to give his decision with out the need of any crutch of favourable notings from his ministry officials.
I hope our Governor, whose sympathy for our case has been appreciated and voiced by all the serving and retired employees, does this quickly. He could perhaps tell the FM that once a favourable decision is taken, the Mumbai High Court could be informed of the decision by the Retired Employees Association, who had approached the court against the withdrawal of the Pension upgradation granted in the past upto a certain period, as well as the Bank and the Government and and submit to the court for withdrawal of the petition. Ministry of Law, Government of India, on whose advice perhaps the matter is being allowed to remain with the Mumbai High Court, should not have any objection to this move.
