LAHORE – The Lahore High Court (LHC) has ruled that government employees who are later regularised may have their uninterrupted contract service included in the calculation of pensionable service.
The ruling came as the court dismissed an appeal filed by the Punjab government against a decision awarding pension and related benefits to the widow of a deceased government employee.
A LHC two-member bench headed by Justice Muzammil Akhtar Shabbir delivered the judgment.
The case involved a Health Department employee who was appointed as a Naib Qasid on a contractual basis in 2005. He was regularised in 2010 and remained in service until his death in 2016.
The Punjab government had maintained that pension benefits could only be granted after completion of 10 years of regular service. It argued that the employee’s contractual period could not be added to his regular service for determining pension eligibility.
The high court, however, rejected the government’s argument in the circumstances of the case.
The bench observed that the employee had worked continuously for five years before his regularisation. Since there was no interruption between his contractual appointment and subsequent regular service, the court held that the earlier period could be taken into account for pension purposes.
The court also referred to a previous judgment of the Supreme Court dealing with the status of contractual service in pension matters.
The judgment clarified that contract service would not ordinarily qualify for pension calculations where there was a break in service before an employee was regularised.
In the present case, however, the employee’s service had remained uninterrupted. The court therefore concluded that his widow was entitled to pension and other benefits based on the combined period of qualifying service.
The LHC subsequently upheld the earlier single-bench ruling and rejected the Punjab government’s appeal.
The judgment establishes that uninterrupted contractual service followed by regularisation can, in appropriate circumstances, contribute towards the pensionable service period of a government employee.
