Wiping The State Clean

I still remember his face. His name was Kishan, a meek messenger in one of the branches of my bank.

I was then posted in Personnel Administration Department at Head Office and among other things I was assigned the job of maintaining seniority lists of both Award and Supervising Staff.

In those days, when the exact date of birth was not known, employees used to declare their dates of birth in year only at the time of appointment. It used to be final, duly accepted and recored by banks also.

But later on the problem cropped up as to what should be the date of retirement, as they had to retire after completion of 60 years of age. Then it was decided to make a rule that in such cases, date of birth would be the 1st July of that year.

Kishan’s date of birth was written as 1946. As per the above rule, he had to retire on 30th June, 2006 on reaching the age of superannuation, but he cooked up a plan in connivance with his lawyer son to fool the bank for getting this date postponed by seven years.

What he did was that he appeared in the High School board examination in 2005 by submitting an affidavit that his date of birth was 24.04.1953. Though he failed in the examination, he produced a copy of his marksheet to the bank that his date of birth should be rectified in the Bank’s record accordingly.

But it was not one-off case. The Bank rejected his plea and Kishan moved to the Court. I had appeared in the initial two hearings, when the then judge had observed that prima facie the case didn’t merit consideration. Thereafter the matter lingered on despite applications made by the Bank to the court to expedite the case.

In the meantime, I was transferred and the original date of his retirement also expired, but Kishan continued performing his duties, as the matter was sub judice. Some hearings did happen thereafter, but the case was not finalised, and Kishan finally retired on the date as per his own wish.

The Bank had lost interest in the case by then. After two years of Kishan’s retirement, the judicial order was finally pronounced that the Bank’s decision was correct in rejecting his application, but his salary won’t be recovered, as he had actually performed his duties in the bank.

As I have already shared in my previous posts the state of judicial system, I won’t repeat again, but I conclude my post with a joke —

Judge – You tease girls at this age! This is not pardonable. You must be punished.

Old man – Sir, kindly listen to me too.

Judge – You’re not a teenager that I should listen to your rubbish and forgive you.

Old man – Milord, this is a 60 year old case. The one I had teased has also come with her grandson.
😊😊😊

–Kaushal Kishore

Advertisement