Mumbai: The Bombay High Court ruled on Thursday that former high court judge Pushpa Ganediwala is entitled to receive pension on par with a high court judge. Ganediwala, who faced criticism for controversial judgments on sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), was demoted to district sessions judge in February 2022 after her tenure as an additional high court judge ended. She subsequently resigned.

In July 2023, Ganediwala challenged a November 2022 communication from the HC registrar that denied her pension benefits as a high court judge. She argued that pension entitlement should be based on service tenure rather than whether a judge retires voluntarily or upon reaching a specified age.

A bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Bharati Dangre quashed the registrar’s communication and ruled that Ganediwala was entitled to a pension as an additional high court judge from February 2022. The court directed: “We direct the registry to fix her pension along with 6 percent interest from February 2022 within two months from today.”

Ganediwala, appointed as a district judge in 2007, became an additional high court judge in 2019. In January 2021, the Supreme Court initially approved her appointment as a permanent judge but later withdrew its recommendation due to her contentious rulings. Her tenure as an additional judge ended in February 2022, and she was not granted an extension or a permanent position, prompting her resignation.

She applied for a pension, but the HC registry determined she was ineligible since she had not retired as a high court judge. Ganediwala argued this decision was arbitrary and legally unsustainable.

The court examined whether the term “retirement” under the High Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Act, 1954, included resignation. Citing Black’s Law Dictionary and Legal Thesaurus, it noted that retirement means the “termination of one’s career,” which includes voluntary resignation. The bench stated: “The resignation as well as the retirement, both result in the conclusion of the service career. In fact, the resignation is one of the modes of retirement from service and is a voluntary act.”

The court concluded that had the legislature intended to restrict pension benefits to superannuation, it would have explicitly stated so. “The word ‘retirement’ in Sections 14 and 15 of the 1954 Act has not been used in a restricted sense to mean retirement on superannuation only.”

The court ordered the state to grant Ganediwala’s pension with 6% annual interest from February 14, 2022, within two months.

Ganediwala came under the scanner for a slew of judgments that ruled that there has to be ‘skin-to-skin contact with sexual intent’ in order for the act to be considered as an offence of sexual assault under POCSO Act and that ‘holding hands of a minor girl and opening of zip of his pants’ does not fall under the definition of ‘sexual assault’ of the Act.