Sambuddha Chakrabarti, J. - (1.) The petitioner no. 1 is a registered society whose members are ex-officers of Balmer Lawrie and Company Limited (the company, for short), i.e., the respondent no. 1. The petitioner no. 2 is the Secretary of the petitioner no. 1.
(2.) The case of the petitioners is that in the year 1989 the company introduced a scheme for superannuation to protect its salaried officers by providing pension to them with effect from 1988 on their attainment the age of superannuation. It is stated that the basic feature of the said scheme was that the respondents had guaranteed pensions to its retired officers at the rates mentioned therein at least for 15 years after their retirement. In the year 2000 and 2002 the company introduced a voluntary retirement scheme by which all the members of the petitioners were retired from the service of the respondent no. 1. At that time they were specifically assured that pension would be disbursed at the appropriate rate as mentioned in the Superannuation Scheme from the notional date of retirement of the respective officers.
(3.) On January 12, 2004, the petitioners had received an open letter from the Trustees of the Company i.e., the respondent no. 3 inter alia informing that due to grave financial condition the Managing Director of the Company i.e. the respondent no. 2 upon consultation with the Income Tax authority had adopted a Deed of Variation of the trust deed of the Superannuation Fund. Some of the basic features of this deed were that superannuation benefits in terms of the pensions to eligible members would be linked to individual's own contribution and would have no linkage with either the period of service or last salary drawn and the management of the Fund was also transferred to the Life Insurance Corporation of India. The corpus available with the fund as on December 31, 2003 was allocated amongst all the members of the fund, both serving and separated officers and the allocated amount was transferred to the LIC as the opening balance of the individual member as on January 1, 2004.;