it2025_00377 — Recovery of excess amount of pension paid to the deceased husband of the Applicant cannot be recovered from the family pension of the Applicant

Recovery of excess amount of pension paid to the deceased husband of the Applicant cannot be recovered from the family pension of the Applicant — This is a legal case titled O.A. No. 180/00352 of 2019 about recovering excess pension paid to a deceased husband from his widow's family pension. The applicant's husband was a Conservator of Forest ... — Facts: Applicant is the wife of Late Gopinathan, who retired from service while working as Conservator of Forest on 31-8-1997. He was a pensioner from the department. Late Gopinathan was drawing pension from SBI under control of Manager of SBI (R-6). On allegation of having sanctioned excess pension with effect from 1-1-2016, it was examined and ordered to recover the excess amount. This OA is filed against that order. It is enough if the Tribunal's order is indicated. Tribunal held: "The revised pension admissible to the deceased employee of the petitioner with effect from 1-1-2006 is concerned, Respondents 2-4 (Government of Kerala, Accountant General (A&E), Thiruvananthapuram and Senior Accounts Officer) submitted that the pension of the deceased husband of the Applicant should have been fixed in the scale of pay of ₹ 15,600-39,100 plus Grade Pay of ₹ 7,600 instead of ₹ 37,400-67,000 plus Grade Pay of ₹ 8,700. This was done erroneously by oversight which resulted in authorizing the pension of ₹ 23,050 and family pension at ₹ 16,355 respectively. The said erroneous fixation wasnoticed and the office of Accountant-General, R-3 vide Annexure A-2 letter informed the District Treasury Officer, Kozhikode about the correct rates of pension admissible to the deceased husband of the Applicant on account of revision of pension ordered in 6th and 7th Central Pay Commission. Therefore, Tribunal held that the Respondent authorities are justified in issuing Annexure-2 by which Respondents have only corrected the erroneous fixation made by the Pension Sanctioning Authority". Further on recovery part, Apex Court in the case of State of Punjab and others v. Rafiq Masih (Whitewasher) and connected cases [ AIR 2015 SC 696 ] had set down the law and declared recovery as impermissible under certain circumstances from the employee. Ruling of the Apex Court in Para. 12 is reproduced. Applicant's case falls under 12

(ii) referred above. It reads "Recovery from retired employees or employees who are due to retire within one year of the order of recovery".