HC directs govt to amend VRS rules to prevent 'exit without restraint'

THE Orissa High Court has directed the state government to amend within three months the provisions on voluntary retirement in the Odisha Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1992, while endorsing rejection of application of Dr Snigdha Prava Mishra, a professor in Physiology, for voluntary retirement from service (VRS).

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While dismissing Dr Mishra's petition recently, Justice SK Panigrahi noted that across states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, governments have codified the power to reject voluntary retirement when the withdrawal of service threatens the well-being of the public.

"Yet in Odisha, the OCS (Pension) Rules, 1992 remain silent where they ought to speak. They lack the safeguard that other states have rightly recognised, that a profession whose absence imperils life itself cannot be surrendered at will. The law, in its present form, leaves an opening, a path unguarded, through which a public servant, however essential his role, may exit without restraint," Justice Panigrahi observed.