Various Allahabad Bank employees who retired between January 1, 1986 and October 31, 1992 are yet to receive gratuity, a benefit for which they have been litigating for many years.
Giving them some respite, the Supreme Court on Tuesday quashed the judgments of Allahabad high court and some other HCs and also scrapped an order passed by the bank’s controlling authority in 1989, depriving them of gratuity on procedural grounds.
The apex court said the law regulating gratuity for the bank’s employees “protects the right of an employee to receive better terms of gratuity under any award or agreement or contract with the employer than the benefits conferred under the Act”.
Allowing the appeals filed by bank employees welfare associations in 2004, a bench of justices B Sudershan Reddy and RM Lodha said it’s “well settled and needs no restatement” that labour and welfare legislation have to be broadly and “liberally construed giving due regard to the Directive Principles of State Policy”.
“The Payment of Gratuity Act… is undoubtedly one such welfare oriented legislation meant to confer certain benefits upon the employees working in various establishments in the Country,” the court observed.
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