Kerala govt alters pension calculation, service rules amended

Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Service Rules have been amended to modify the method of determining the service period of state government employees for calculating their pension.

Earlier a service period of more than 6 months was considered as a year and totally exempted in case of less than six months. From now on service of above three months and less than nine months will be considered as half a year's service period. For instance if the service period is 28 years and seven months  till now it was considered as 29 years. But hereafter it will be calculated as 28 and a half years.

Less than three years service will be exempted. A service period of nine months or above will be calculated as a full year.  However, the benefit of calculating 9 years and one day as 10 years has been retained.

A minimum of 10 years service is required for pension. The system of calculating 29 years and one day as 30 years and granting full pension has been done away with. Granting gratuity by calculating 32 years and one day as 33 years has been discontinued with.

Extra days of the Leap Year will be taken into account for pension. Normally there are 365 days in a year and there is an extra day in leap years.

The government decided to amend the service rules after employees who had four five days left for completing 29 years and one day in service, went to court. They put forward a demand that extra days of Leap Years should also be added to the service period for calculating full pension. The plea was accepted by the court.

In order to overcome this condition, the government decided to do away with the system of calculating 29 years and one day service as 30 years.