This is a follow up story to (https://indusscrolls.com/thousands-of-retired-and-ailing-punjab-college-faculty-awaiting-crucial-sc-order-on-pension). September 28 was the date of the “final” hearing of the case. The hearing had been postponed over flimsy reasons quite a few times, costing a delay of many months this year. Once again it was pushed to November 15, 2022 because the opposite side’s lawyer was unavailable on account of “personal difficulty”.
The opposite side’s “arguing counsel”, Nupur Kumar, knew about his personal difficulty two days before the hearing, as he gave a letter to the Registrar of SC on September 26. The very clinical judges “perused the letter circulated by learned counsel” and they also “perused the objection letter circulated by learned counsel for the petitioner(s).” End of another chapter in the book of justice. When I asked a petitioner about the outcome of the case, he passed on the dry note that the court clerk had handed to their lawyer.
What was said in the objection letter by their lawyer? The petitioner I spoke to did not know, he did not even want to know, so dulled is he by the long wait. My sources are some of the 1800 original petitioners. The judges have been informed that 200 of them are dead and the rest are not growing young after almost 15 to 20 years of retirement. Neither are they running like Milkha Singh–who could, till almost the end of his life. In fact, they are walking with difficulty.
A typical day for most of them is the morning cup of tea and newspaper reading—just as they did in the times they were working. The rest of the day is dramatically and painfully different. Some walk with a stick; some need assistance even to walk inside the house; warm water foot and leg baths are the norm for most; stiff joints, weak nerves, weakened hearing, pace-makers in the heart, mental trauma of losing their spouses in some cases, children living abroad or away, and reduced social interaction are some of the most obvious problems these oldies face.
The subtler ones could be to do with the missing molars and poor brain health. Mostly, these old people forget what they said to whom and when, so that they repeat themselves and get on the nerves of whoever cares to listen. Reduced intelligence also leads them to high anxiety levels over the simplest activities or drives them to depression. This is common to most people in their 70s and 80s.
What disconnects the group of petitioners even further from normal life is the absence of material support which is a pension. Unable to afford regular health care, and cars and drivers to take them to doctors, they fall further into depression. Having given all their healthy years to the institutions that employed them and in keeping with the old school values of treating education as a sacred service, they are so confused about their fate today. They have constant questions about the shopkeepers who treated them so shabbily and about the futility of an honestly-led life of service to scores of thousands of students, and, therefore, to the country.
Meanwhile, their counterparts, who worked in government colleges and institutions, get a decent pension, anything between 80,000 to 140,000 rupees, depending upon the scale at which they retired. They can afford good medical care, which gets reimbursed. They can also afford masseurs, physiotherapists and attendants at home if needed.
I wonder if the judges, who let the ‘wrong’ side fool around with the very hearing of the case, dragging it from August 24 to September 28 to November 15, and from 2015 to 2022, are doing the job expected of them, namely, justice. Forget about the order. In the very lenience shown to the lawyers of private college owners (read sharks) and the resultant dragging of the case-hearing for this long, the judges are being cruel to the already distressed petitioners.
There should be a law that mandates the judges to “peruse” a case with the objectivity it demands. In this case, an objective view would not only look at the plight of the old and ailing private college teachers as described above but also compensate for the suffering inflicted on them by the delay in deciding the case.
Thousands of Retired and Ailing Punjab College Faculty Awaiting Crucial SC Order on Pension
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