Direction sought to raise retirement age of non-teaching staff

CHENNAI: Madras High Court today issued notice to Registrar, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, on a petition by a non-teaching staff member attaining superannuation today, seeking a direction to universities in Tamil Nadu to raise the retirement age of such employees.

Acting on a petition from one R Balakrishnan, BU's Section officer of Convocation Section Examination Wing, Justice S Nagamuthu in his interim order directed that any decision taken on the tenure of the petitioner's service shall be subject to the outcome of the writ petition.

Balakrishnan was appointed junior Assistant (non-teaching staff) in the University on April 2 1987, promoted as ASO in 1997 and again as SO in 2013. His due retirement falls on March 31 this year, as per the university statute.

The petitioner contended that after the 5th Pay Commission recommendations based on Union government's directions, state governments and Union Territories revised retirement age of non-teaching staff in universities to 60 years on par with teaching staff, except Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

He further contended that even in Andhra Pradesh orders had been passed in respect of Osmania University to fix the retirement age for non-teaching staff as 60. Therefore only universities in Tamil Nadu the orders were yet to be passed.

Balakrishnan said the Supreme Court has held that there is no impracticability in fixing the age of superannuation uniformly for teaching and non-teaching staff of BU and that the Union government had issued a memorandum on May 30 1998 for fixation of age of retirement of employee of autonomous bodies/ organizations by which it was directed to increase the age of retirement as 60 years.

He alleged that when other state governments and Union Territories had already complied with the Government of India's order only Tamil Nadu including Bharathiyar University was discriminating against the non-teaching staff of the university.

Hence he sought a direction to revise the retirement age as per orders of the Union government and an interim injunction restraining the University from relieving him.