No Post-Retiral Benefits for Employees of Self-Financing Institutes Without Specific Rules: Allahabad High Court The Allahabad High Court has ruled that employees of self-financing institutes affiliated with a university are not entitled to post-retirement benefits such as pension and gratuity unless specific service rules or statutory provisions explicitly grant them. The court clarified that the mere status of an institute as an “integral part” of a university does not automatically entitle its staff to pensionary benefits, especially when the financial burden for such benefits cannot be transferred to the public exchequer. The judgment, delivered by Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery, was issued in the case of Rekha Singh vs. Union of India and Others (WRIT – A No. 4877 of 2021). Rekha Singh, a former Director at the Institute of Correspondence Courses and Continuing Education (ICC&CE), University of Allahabad, had sought post-retirement benefits after her retirement on August 31, 2017. She claimed entitlement to pension, gratuity, and provident fund, arguing that her service conditions were protected under the University of Allahabad Act, 2005. The court examined the petitioner’s case against the backdrop of earlier rulings. In 2016, the same court had directed the university to pay Rekha Singh her salary from November 2014 to her retirement date, citing that ICC&CE was a self-financing institute. The court had then ruled that the financial liability for her salary could not fall on the public exchequer. When the university rejected her post-retirement claims in 2019, citing the institute’s temporary and self-financed nature, she filed the current petition.#allahabad_high_court #rekha_singh #university_of_allahabad #icc_ce #saurabh_shyam_shamshery
