{"id":1147051,"date":"2026-01-16T18:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.app.com.pk\/?p=1147051"},"modified":"2026-01-16T18:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:50:07","slug":"pension-is-not-a-concession-but-a-constitutional-right-says-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/2026\/01\/16\/pension-is-not-a-concession-but-a-constitutional-right-says-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Pension is not a concession but a constitutional right, says Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">ISLAMABAD, Jan 16 (APP):The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that pension is neither a concession nor charity but a constitutional and legal right of a government employee, which cannot be denied merely on the grounds of delayed application or resignation.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to the court-approved detailed judgment issued for reporting, a three-member bench comprising Justice Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui, Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb set aside the Federal Service Tribunal\u2019s decision dated 3 July 2024 in the case of Muhammad Usman vs Federation of Pakistan.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Court noted that Muhammad Usman had completed more than 20 years of service as a Senior Auditor (BS-11) in the office of the Military Accountant General, Rawalpindi \u2014 fulfilling the statutory requirement for pension. It further observed that after the 2001 amendment to the Civil Servants Act, the qualifying service for pension was reduced from 25 to 20 years, a condition already met by the petitioner.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Supreme Court rejected the argument that the petitioner was not entitled to pension due to a 13-year delay in submitting his application. The judgment stated that the right to pension accrues immediately upon retirement or acceptance of resignation and cannot be extinguished merely due to delay. It added that neither the doctrine of laches nor the law of limitation applies to pension claims.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">The bench also criticised the misinterpretation of CSR Regulation 418, clarifying that the regulation relates to the counting of service and not to complete forfeiture of pension. It held that resignation, by itself, does not deprive an employee of pension\u2014especially when the requisite length of service has already been completed.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Declaring the tribunal\u2019s and the department\u2019s decisions to be based on a misunderstanding of the law, the Supreme Court converted the petition into an appeal and allowed it, directing authorities to grant Muhammad Usman full pensionary benefits in accordance with the law.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Reiterating earlier precedents, the Court once again emphasised that pension is a vested and protected right that cannot be taken away on administrative or technical grounds.<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISLAMABAD, Jan 16 (APP):The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that pension is neither a concession nor charity but a constitutional and legal right of a government employee, which cannot be denied merely on the grounds of delayed application or resignation. According to the court-approved detailed judgment issued for reporting, a three-member bench comprising Justice&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1067948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","_speechable_audio":"","_speechable_word_timings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4191,3020],"post_template":[],"top_category":[],"class_list":["post-1147051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-senior-auditor","tag-supreme-court","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1067948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147051"},{"taxonomy":"post_template","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_template?post=1147051"},{"taxonomy":"top_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.app.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/top_category?post=1147051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}