A 79-year-old retired professor of English, who has been fighting a series of legal battles since 1979 with the Gujarat University (GU) over non-consideration of his 16-years of teaching service outside the state, has finally got relief from the Gujarat High Court, albeit after 19 years of his superannuation.
The professor, RA Malagi, got the relief from the division bench of Acting Chief Justice AS Dave and Justice Biren Vaishnav, which overturned the judgment of a single-judge bench of the court. The division bench on Friday directed the state government to consider the 16 years of service rendered by the professor in Pune University and Karnataka University while calculating his pension benefits.
According to Malagi's counsel SP Hasurkar, the petitioner after completing his education with two gold medals joined Pune University as an assistant professor in July 1961 and worked there till September 1971. In the same month, he joined Karnataka University as a Reader in English. Thereafter, he came to know about the vacancy for the post of professor in School of Languages, GU, and joined the varsity after complying with the recruitment process in September 1977.
It was the case of Malagi that other faculty members who had joined GU from other universities in Gujarat were granted pay protection, but GU refused to grant him pay protection. This forced the petitioner to approach the high court in 1979, which in 1992 ruled in his favour and rejected the varsity's argument that Malagi cannot be provided pay protection since he is from outside the state.
Thereafter, the verdict came to be challenged by GU before a division bench in 1992, which was dismissed by the court in 1993. Malagi continued his service in GU and retired in October 2000. Later, he found that while calculating his pension benefits, the 16 years service rendered by him in Maharashtra and Karnataka was not counted by the state authorities and only his tenure in GU has been counted.
In 2001, he moved against this decision before the Gujarat Universities and Services Tribunal, which rejected his plea in 2003. Against this rejection, he moved before a single-judge bench of the high court in 2004. The case remained pending before the high court for almost 15 years and finally, in January 2019, the court delivered its verdict. It termed the case as "meritless" and rejected it.
Against this rejection, the retired professor moved the division bench, which eventually ruled in his favour.