' KHALIL-UR-REHMAN RAMDAY, J.---This petition by the Federal Bank for Cooperatives (under Liquidation) filed through its Liquidator is directed against a judgment dated 5-11-2002 of the Federal Service Tribunal, Islamabad, passed in the respondent's Appeal No,1155(R)-CE-2001.
2. Through an advertisement appearing in the Press on 14-3-1980, the Federal Bank for Cooperatives (hereinafter called the petitioner-Bank) invited applications for the posts of Steno- typists. Ehsan Muhammad (hereinafter called the respondent) who was, during the said days, working as a temporary Lower Division Clerk in the Cabinet Secretariat of the Cabinet Division of the Government of Pakistan, submitted an application dated 6-4-1980 to the Director Administration, of the petitioner-Bank seeking one of the said posts. As a result of the test/interview conducted on 16-10-1980, the respondent was selected and was offered the post of a Steno-typist through a letter dated 3-11-1980. The respondent accepted the terms and conditions on which he was offered the said post and reported for duty with the petitioner-Bank on 13-11-1980. He remained in the service of the petitioner-Bank till 1S-6-2001 when he opted for the retirement under the Golden Hand Shake Scheme. He was allowed the permissible retiring and pensionary benefits but he made an application on 21-8-2001 requesting the petitioner-Bank that the service put in by him in the Cabinet Division of the Government of Pakistan from 11-7-1975 to 10-11-1980 may also becounted for determining the pension due to him After considering the said request the petitioner-Bank rejected the same on 6-10-2001 which led the respondent to the Federal Service with an appeal under section 4 of the Federal Service Tribunals Act.
3. Through its above mentioned impugned judgment dated 5-11-2002 the learned Federal Service Tribunal allowed the respondent's appeal essentially on the ground that his case was covered under Regulation (9)(c)(i) of the Federal Bank for Cooperatives Employees Pension and Gratuity Regulations, 1989 and resultaroty directed the petitioner-Bank to count the previous service of the respondent with the Cabinet Division on deposit of proportionate contribution for the said period by the petitioner on the basis of last pay drawn.
4. Feeling aggrieved of this impugned judgment the petitioner-Bank has approached this Court with this petition for grant of leave to appeal.
5. The learned counsel for the petitioner-Bank and the learned counsel for Ehsan Muhammad respondent have been heard at some length and we have also perused the available record with the assistance of the said learned counsel.
6. The learned counsel for the petitioner-Bank took us through the said Regulation No,9 of the Federal Bank for Cooperatives Employees Pension and Gratuity Regulations, 1989 which regulation prescribes the guidelines according to which the total qualifying service of a bank employee was to be determined and submitted that the case of the respondent was not covered by the provisions of Regulation No,9(c)(i) and that the learned Tribunal was in gross error in having held otherwise.
7. The learned counsel for Ehsan Muhammad respondent, however, argued that the respondent had submitted an application for the post in question through proper channel and his case thus fell within the purview of above mentioned Regulation No,9(b). He contended in the alternative that the respondent's case fell squarely within the ambit of Regulation No,9(c)(i) and that the learned Service Tribunal had thus correctly applied the relevant law in reaching the conclusions that it did.
He finally submitted that the petition in hand did not disclose any substantial question of law of public importance in terms of Article 212(3) of the Constitution and therefore, the same deserved to be dismissed.
8. Since the merits of the case hinge entirely on the above mentioned Regulation No,9, therefore, the relevant portion of the same is reproduced hereunder for ready reference: "9. Determination of total qualifying servicc.---( ) For thepurposes of determining the total qualifying service of an employee, the following categories of service/periods shall be taken into account:--
(a) actual service rendered by him in the bank from the date of first appointment;
(b) actual pensionable service, if any, rendered by him in the Government provided he joined the Bank through proper channel;
(c) actual pensionable service, if any, rendered by him in any autonomous or semi-autonomous body of the Government and such service is continuous provided that the former organizationis prepared to accept the proportionate pensionary liability for the period such employee was in its service.
' As per decision taken by the Board in its meeting held on 17th April, 1995 the following is to be added in section 9(i)(c) under "Determination of total qualifying service. ...... Previous service in any organization which was takeninto consideration during recruitment will be included for the purposes of pensionary benefits. Contribution for pension for the above period will be allowed to be deposited by the employee on the basis of the last pay drawn."
(Emphasis and underlinings is ours).
9. A bare perusal of the said provision of clause (c) of Regulation No,9 would demonstrate that this clause is attracted only in the case of A persons who had rendered pensionable service in any autonomous or semi-autonomous body of the Government. It is an admitted fact that Ehsan Muhammad respondent had never been in service of any autonomous or semi-autonomous body prior to his taking up employment with the petitioner-Bank. The learned counsel for the respondent, however, attempted to argue that the word "Organization" used in the said clause should be given a wider meaning so as to include a Division or a Ministry of the Federal Government. We only hope that the learned counsel was not serious in making this submission because the said word "Organization" used in clause (c) and sub-clause (i) of the said clause (c) refers to the autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies mentioned in the said provisions and extending the scope of the said word would only make a mockery of the principles of interpretation of statutes. It may be added that the case of the employees of the petitioner-Bank who had rendered pensionable service in the Government had been specifically dealt with by the above-quoted clause (b) of Regulation No,9 and it is a basic and fundamental principle of interpretation of statutes that where a situation is specifically dealt with by a provision of law then any general provision relating to the same subject would not be attracted in cases specifically catered for. Since, as has been
10. Having thus examined this aspect of the matter, we find that the case of the respondent did not fall within the purview of Regulation No,9(c) or 9(c)(i) and we further find that the learned Tribunal was in gross error in holding otherwise.
11. The case of the respondent could have fallen within the ambit of clause (b) of Regulation No,9 provided he had joined the petitioner-Bank "Through Proper Channel". Although the respondent had failed to establish before the learned Service Tribunal that he had joined the petitioner-Bank through proper channel as a result whereof the learned Service Tribunal had felt compelled to grant relief to the respondent under Regulation No,9(c) yet in the interest of justice, we have once again examined the question whether it could be possible for us to hold that the respondent had taken up employment with the petitioner-Bank through proper channel.
12. There is available on our record an application dated 24-3-1980 which is addressed by the respondent to the Director Administration of the petitioner-Bank which carries the following words on its face: "THROUGH PROPER CHANNEL"
' The respondent could never establish before the learned Tribunal that this application allegedly submitted by him through proper channel had ever reached the petitioner-Bank or that it was in pursuance of the said application submitted through proper channel that the post in question had been offered to him. On the contrary we have been taken through a letter dated 18-8-2003 addressed by the Section Officer (Admn.1) of the Cabinet Secretariat (Cabinet Division) of the Government of Pakistan to the Manager (L&C) of the petitioner-Bank which appears at page 3 of Part-III of our paper book. As per this letter it was verified by the Cabinet Division that no application of Ehsan Muhammad respondent was ever forwarded by the said Division to the petitioner-Bank. The application of the respondent which was processed in the petitioner-Bank and which had led to his appointment as a Stenotypist is available at page 30 of our paper book. This application is dated 6-4-1980 and its comparison with the respondent's above mentioned application dated 24-3-1980 demonstrates that the application dated 4-6-1980 was not its advance or even its exact copy inasmuch as the words "Through ProperChannel" which appeared in the application dated 24-3-1980 were missing from the application dated 6-4-1980. It may be added that although it is mentioned in the said application dated 6-4-1980 that the respondent had "Five years" service as L.D C./Typist in the Cabinet Division" but no mention at all is however mace in the said application that the respondent was still working with the Cabinet Division. This in fact appears to be a concealment of this important fact from the petitioner-Bank. We are also pained to notice further misconduct on the part of the respondent which is evident from the documents available on our record. Pursuant to his selection an offer of employment was made to the respondent by the petitioner-Bank through a letter dated 3-11-1980. He submitted his resignation to the Cabinet Division on 10-11-1980 and did not even wait for the acceptance of his resignation and reported for duty with the respondent-Bank on 13-11-1980. It was on 20-11-1980 that the petitioner's resignation was accepted by the Government of Pakistan. From the resignation of the respondent which is available at page 6 of the Third Part of our paper book it transpires that the reasons offered by him for resigning his job with the Government was some undefined domestic circumstances. He had once again concealed the fact even from the Government that he was resigning to take up employment with the petitioner-Bank. It is thus obvious to us that present was not the case where the respondent had taken up employment with the petitioner- Bank through proper channel. What is evident from the record is that he was, on the contrary, concealing from the petitioner-Bank that he was at the relevant time, in the employment of the Government of Pakistan and on the other hand he was taking steps to withhold from the Government of Pakistan that he was resigning his job to take up employment with the petitioner- Bank.
13. In view of the facts and circumstances which have been noted and discussed above it stands proved on record that the respondent had not joined the petitioner-Bank through proper channel.
The case of the respondent, therefore, was not even covered by Regulation 9(b) of the above mentioned Regulations.
14. Learned counsel for the respondent had finally argued that the petitioner-Bank did not qualify for the grant of leave to appeal because this petition did not disclose any question of law of public importance. Reliance was placed on Baber Gul and another v. Sohail Ahmad Sheikh and others (2002 SCM R 581); S.A.M. Wahdi v. Federation of Pakistan through Secretary, Finance Division, Islamabad and others (2002 SCM R 876) and Syed Abdul Qadir Shah v. Government of Sindh through Secretary, Communication and Works Department, Government of Sindh, Karachi and others (2002 SCM R 904). The first of the above mentioned three precedent cases was a case where the Balochistan Service Tribunal had condoned the delay of two days in the filing of theappeal before it. This Court had refused to interfere with the judgment of the said learned Tribunal on the ground that the question was one of fact and it was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the learned Tribunal to condone or not to condone the above mentioned delay and exercising such a discretionary power did not admit of interference by this Court. The other two precedent cases were also situations which did not involve interpretation of any provisions of law nor were they the cases where a provision of law had been grossly misinterpreted and misapplied by the Service Tribunals. These three cases are, therefore, obviously distinguishable. On the other hand present is a case where the provisions of Regulation 9(c) of the Federal Bank of Cooperatives Employees Pension and Gratuity Regulations 1989 had been wrongly interpreted and applied and such an error, if left uncorrected, could lead to serious implications in the future vis-a-vis calculation of qualifying services which could obviously have implications in all such future cases.
Needless to add that a question where spending of public money is concerned is, to say the least, a question of public importance.
15. Having thus examined all aspects of the matter, we find that the learned Federal Service Tribunal had acted illegally in allowing the respondent's appeal through the judgment impugned before us. Consequently, this petition is converted into an appeal which is allowed. Resultantly, the impugned judgment dated 5-11-2002 passed. By the learned Federal Service Tribunal, Islamabad in Appeal No,1155- of 2001, is set aside. No orders as to costs.