- (1.) These review petitions were entertained on a grievance being made that while deciding the appeals in question reliance had been placed on some documents which had been annexed along with the written submission filed after the judgment was reserved, as permitted by the court, because of which the review petitioners did not get an opportunity to have their say on the applicability and relevance of the documents.
(2.) During the hearing of the review petitions it was not disputed by either Shri Salve or Shri Tripathi appearing for some of the review petitioners that theoffice Memorandum of 1/8/1975 had been made applicable by the Ministry of Defence vide their letter dated 28/10/1975 to the Armed Forces pensioners also, as mentioned in para 6 of the judgment since reported in Union of India v. G. Vasudevan Pillay. What was rather contended by Shri Tripathi was that the denial of the dearness relief to the service personnel re-employed to posts under central or State governments, without there being a similar provision for those re-employed in public sector undertakings or nationalised banks, is discriminatory. We are not impressed with this contention as it is known that government employees form a distinct class and their service conditions can be different from those who are employed in public sector undertakings or nationalised banks.
(3.) To the aforesaid submission of Shri Tripathi, Shri Salve's booster was that the Ministry of Defence's letter dated 28/10/1975 would become non- applicable in view of Ministry of Defence's OM No. 2 (l) /83/d (Civ-l) dated 8/2/19833 by which while fixing the pay of ex-servicemen on re-employment pension drawn by them was required to be ignored either fully or up to a specified limit. Relying on this OM, the submission made was that pension has been treated differently from pay, and so, the dearness relief paid on pension should be treated different from the dearness relief available after re-employment. According to the learned counsel both the reliefs can coexist. We are not persuaded to accept this submission because the subject-matter of 1983 OM is entirely different and cannot affect the rationale of denial of dearness relief on pension on re-employment as mentioned in the judgment rendered in the appeals - the same being the dearness relief paid after re-employment takes care of the erosion in the value of the money because of rise in prices, which lies at the back of grant of dearness relief. Payment of dearness relief in such a situation on pension would amount to giving dearness relief twice, which is not visualised.;