Case Background
The case arises from the pension of a retired Central Government employee, late Rama Nand Prasad, who worked in the Ministry of Mines, Government of India.
He retired on attaining the age of superannuation on 31.08.2001. After retirement, he started receiving his pension through the State Bank of India, Sahajitpur Branch, Saran district.
Rama Nand Prasad passed away on 01.02.2005. After his death, his wife, Akhileshwari Devi, as his legal heir, became entitled to family pension.
Pension and family pension of Central Government employees are disbursed by the concerned Ministry through nationalised banks. In this case, the payments were routed through State Bank of India.
However, even after the death of Rama Nand Prasad on 01.02.2005, the Bank continued to remit full pension in his name as if he were alive. This continued from 01.02.2005 up to 01.02.2018.
On 01.02.2018, the Bank claims to have noticed that full pension was still being credited in the name of the deceased for the entire period from 01.02.2005 to 01.02.2018.
The Bank then calculated what it considered “excess payment” of pension at Rs. 7,65,207/-. It decided to recover this amount by deducting Rs. 5,000/- per month from the amounts payable, and passed an order to this effect against the widow, Akhileshwari Devi.
Feeling aggrieved, she filed C.W.J.C. No. 4156 of 2018 before the Patna High Court. The learned single judge, by order dated 01.07.2019, allowed her writ petition.
The single judge relied on various Supreme Court decisions, including State of Punjab and Others v. Rafiq Masih and Others, (2015) 4 SCC 475, and held that excess pension paid to the deceased employee could not be recovered from his widow.
Challenging this, the State Bank of India and its officers filed the present Letters Patent Appeal (L.P.A. No. 270 of 2021) before a Division Bench of the Patna High Court.
What the Court Examined and Decided
The Division Bench, comprising Hon’ble Mr. Justice P. B. Bajanthri and Hon’ble Mr. Justice Rajiv Roy, first considered an application (I.A. 01 of 2021) for condonation of delay.
The appeal had been filed with a delay of about one year and 236 days. The Court observed that this revealed the appellant-Bank was “not so serious in contesting the matter”. Still, for the reasons stated in the application and affidavit, the Court condoned the delay and proceeded to hear the appeal on merits.
The Court then recorded the undisputed facts: the employee retired on 31.08.2001, died on 01.02.2005, and yet the Bank, by oversight, continued to remit full pension to his account from 01.02.2005 to 01.02.2018.
To “rectify” this error, the Bank calculated the alleged excess payment at Rs. 7,65,207/- and ordered recovery in monthly instalments of Rs. 5,000/- from the widow.
The Bank’s counsel raised two main grounds before the Division Bench:
First, he argued that the writ petition itself was not maintainable. Since the deceased was a Central Government employee, any dispute, according to the Bank, should have been taken to the Central Administrative Tribunal under Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, and not to the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution.
Second, on merits, he contended that the continued payment of pension after death was only a bona fide mistake by the Bank officials. Therefore, in law, the Bank was entitled to recover the excess amount from the widow.
In support of this, he cited several decisions:
(i) High Court of Punjab & Haryana v. Jagdev Singh, 2016(4) PLJR (SC) 78.
(ii) Chandi Prasad Uniyal and Others v. State of Uttarakhand and Others, 2012(8) SCC 417.
(iii) Union of India v. Sri Bijoy Kumar, 2022(1) PLJR 182.
He also referred to the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Thomas Daniel v. State of Kerala & Others, Civil Appeal No. 7115 of 2010, decided on 02.05.2022, reported in 2022 Live Law (SC) 438, dealing with recovery of excess payment. Additionally, he relied on the Constitution Bench decision in Sales Tax Officer v. Kanhaiya Lal, AIR 1959 SC 135, particularly paragraphs 24 and 31, on the principle of recovery of money paid under mistake.
The Division Bench considered these submissions.
On the objection to maintainability, the Court held that the argument regarding exclusive jurisdiction of the Central Administrative Tribunal could not be accepted.
The Court reasoned that the deceased employee had died on 01.02.2005, and from that date the master-servant relationship between him and the Government of India had ceased. Thus, the dispute was not about service conditions of a government servant.
The respondent-widow had not challenged any action of the Government or its Department. Her grievance was directed against the action of the Bank, which is not the Government, and she herself was not a Government servant.
Therefore, the case was not about service conditions to be decided by the Tribunal. Instead, it was about the Bank’s independent action of recovery. Such an action, the Court held, is subject to scrutiny under Article 226, and cannot be questioned before the Administrative Tribunal.
Accordingly, the preliminary objection of the Bank on maintainability was rejected.
On the merits, the Court closely examined the Bank’s conduct.
It noted that payment of full pension in the name of the deceased from 01.02.2005 to 01.02.2018 happened due to the Bank’s own “sheer mistake”. More importantly, the Bank detected this mistake only after thirteen years.
The Court observed that the Government of India has a policy that retired pensioners must submit a “live certificate” every year in a particular month to the respective bank branch for continuation of pension.
Despite this, the Bank had not obtained the live certificate of late Rama Nand Prasad from 2005 to 2018. The Court called this a “serious lapse” on the part of the Bank officials.
In addition, the Court pointed out that the Bank conducts yearly audit. In such audits, the officials should have checked whether the pension or family pension remitted by the Government was tallying with the amounts actually disbursed by the Bank.
If the Bank had been diligent, it would have noticed any anomaly long ago. The fact that the error continued for thirteen years showed a glaring failure on the Bank’s part.
The Court also considered the legal position on recovery of excess payments. It extracted paragraphs 24 and 31 of the Constitution Bench decision in Kanhaiya Lal, which deal with recovery of money paid under mistake of fact or law.
However, the Bench specifically noted that the issue in Kanhaiya Lal was not about pension. It further observed that the Supreme Court has, time and again, held that excess payment due to error cannot be recovered unless the employee had misrepresented to the employer.
In this case, there was no allegation that the deceased, or his widow, had misrepresented anything. The entire error lay with the Bank, which did not follow basic procedures like obtaining yearly life certificates and reconciling accounts in audit.
The Court held that these Supreme Court principles, especially as seen in more recent decisions like Thomas Daniel, actually supported the widow rather than the Bank.
Therefore, the Bank could not saddle the family pensioner with the burden of its own prolonged negligence.
The Court went a step further and stated that if there was any alleged excess payment of pension in favour of the deceased, the proper legal remedy for the Bank would have been to institute a civil suit, not to directly order recovery from the widow by unilateral deductions.
Given these factors, the Division Bench concluded that the Bank had not made out any case for interference with the single judge’s order.
In the result, the Letters Patent Appeal was dismissed. The order of the learned single judge dated 01.07.2019 in C.W.J.C. No. 4156 of 2018 was affirmed, thereby protecting Akhileshwari Devi from the recovery of Rs. 7,65,207/- through deductions from her dues.
Why This Judgment Matters
This judgment is important for pensioners and their families, especially widows and other dependants of deceased government employees whose pensions are disbursed through banks.
The Patna High Court has made it clear that banks cannot make up for their own long-standing mistakes by pushing the burden on to vulnerable family pensioners.
The decision recognises that banks have clear duties: they must obtain annual life certificates, maintain proper records, conduct timely audits, and detect irregularities quickly.
If they fail in these duties for many years, they cannot later claim that excess payments made due to their negligence must be recovered from the widow, who did not mislead or cheat anyone.
The judgment also clarifies that when a dispute is about a bank’s independent action, and not about the service conditions of a government employee, a writ petition before the High Court is maintainable. The Central Administrative Tribunal is not the only forum in such situations.
For ordinary citizens, the ruling offers reassurance that courts will look at the conduct of powerful institutions like banks and will not allow technical arguments to override fairness, especially where family pensioners are involved.
Legal Issues and Answers
- Issue: Was the writ petition filed by the widow maintainable, or should she have gone only to the Central Administrative Tribunal under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985?
Answer: The Patna High Court held the writ petition was maintainable, as the dispute was about the Bank’s recovery action, not about service conditions of a government servant. The deceased had already died, the master-servant relationship had ended, and the Bank is not the Government. - Issue: Could the Bank recover the alleged excess pension paid for thirteen years from the widow, a family pensioner, by deducting Rs. 5,000/- per month?
Answer: The Court answered no. The excess payment arose solely due to the Bank’s serious lapse in not obtaining life certificates and not detecting the error in audit. Such excess pension paid to the deceased could not be recovered from his widow. If at all, the Bank’s remedy lay in filing a suit, not unilateral recovery from her.
Cases Cited by the Court
- State of Punjab and Others v. Rafiq Masih and Others, (2015) 4 SCC 475 (relied on by the single judge, referred to in the Division Bench judgment).
- High Court of Punjab & Haryana v. Jagdev Singh, 2016(4) PLJR (SC) 78 (cited by the appellants).
- Chandi Prasad Uniyal and Others v. State of Uttarakhand and Others, 2012(8) SCC 417 (cited by the appellants).
- Union of India v. Sri Bijoy Kumar, 2022(1) PLJR 182 (cited by the appellants).
- Thomas Daniel v. State of Kerala & Others, Civil Appeal No. 7115 of 2010, decided on 02.05.2022, 2022 Live Law (SC) 438 (considered as the latest Supreme Court decision on excess payment, held to assist the respondent’s case).
- Sales Tax Officer v. Kanhaiya Lal, AIR 1959 SC 135 (Constitution Bench; paragraphs 24 and 31 extracted, distinguished as not dealing with pension matters).
Case Details
Case Number: Letters Patent Appeal No. 270 of 2021
Case Title: The Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India, Centralized Pension Processing Centre & Anr. v. Akhileshwari Devi & Ors.
Court: High Court of Judicature at Patna
Date of Judgment: 19.07.2022
Coram: Hon’ble Mr. Justice P. B. Bajanthri and Hon’ble Mr. Justice Rajiv Roy
Citation: 2022 (4) PLJR 611
Advocates: For the appellants (State Bank of India and its officer): Mr. Rakesh Kumar Singh. Advocate(s) for the respondents are not specified in the text made available.
Nature of the Case: Letters Patent Appeal against a single judge’s order in a writ petition (C.W.J.C. No. 4156 of 2018) concerning recovery of alleged excess pension from a family pensioner.
Link to Judgment: https://patnahighcourt.gov.in/viewjudgment/MyMyNzAjMjAyMSMxI04=—am1–I9PdYsdPvI=
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