MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently imposed Rs 2 lakh cost on the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) for suppressing certain facts from the court in a case filed by it against the rejection of its request to verify the genuineness of the community certificate of one of its employees in 2019.
The State Level Scrutiny Committee-II of Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department had rejected the corporation's request seeking an inquiry into the community certificate of one T Karthikeyan, who had worked as a development officer in LIC.
A similar verification was done in 1990 and Karthikeyan's certificate, which stated that he belonged to the Scheduled Tribe community, was declared to be genuine. When the corporation wanted a re-verification seven years later, the same was challenged by Karthikeyan and his petition was allowed by the high court by holding that a re-verification cannot be done.
However, claiming that new complaints have been received, the LIC sought for another inquiry, which was closed by the scrutiny committee in 2019, challenging which the corporation moved the high court in 2020. Meanwhile, Karthikeyan, who retired from service, also approached the court seeking direction to release his pension and other benefits.
Hearing both cases, a Bench of justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri ruled in favour of Karthikeyan by observing, "If some new and additional material is made available by some person and that too, 15 years after the first verification, we do not think that the beneficiary or employee could be harassed with a third or fourth enquiry on whims and fancies of the employer." They also directed the LIC to pay all benefits to Karthikeyan within four months. But they pointed out that the LIC, in its affidavit, had suppressed the facts about the earlier verification done in 1990.
"We are dismayed, shocked and surprised at this kind of suppression made by a premier financial institution in the country. We hope that such incidents are not repeated for trifling favours from the Court," the judges observed. They imposed Rs 2 lakh cost on LIC, with a direction to pay the amount to the Cancer Institute in Chennai. It is open to the corporation to recover the amount from the official concerned, who filed the affidavit, they added.