Chandigarh, Nov. 16 -- Differently abled employees in Haryana would now be able to serve till the age of 60 years, the Punjab and Haryana high court has ruled. The high court bench of justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Rohit Kapoor struck down provisions under Rule 143 of Haryana Civil Service (General) Rules, which prescribed the age of superannuation as 60 years for differently abled employees with a minimum degree of disability of 70% or above or blindness. However, the court clarified it shall be open for the state to take a conscious decision whether or not to allow the extended age of superannuation for all employees suffering with disability. The court was dealing with a clutch of petitions filed in 2023 by differently abled employees, who had challenged the Rule 143 which extended the benefit of extension in the age of superannuation to 60 years only to such differently abled employees, whose degree of disability is 70% or above or those employees who are blind and deny such benefit to other differently abled persons. "We, therefore, find substance in the petitioners' grievance that Rule 143 of the Rules of 2016 insofar as it limits the benefit of extended age of superannuation to persons suffering with disability of 70% or more or blindness contravenes Article 14 of the Constitution of India as well as the provisions of the Act of 2016 (The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016) and consequently is liable to be declared ultra vires," the bench said adding that all differently abled employees of the state, who are issued the certificate of disability under The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 and the Act of 2016 would be entitled to the benefit of enhanced age of superannuation of 60 years. The retirement age of employees in Haryana is 58 years. The court found that the policy for extending the age of superannuation was introduced in November 1988, which limited the benefit of extended age of superannuation to the employees with no vision/blindness who entered in service after attaining the age of 30 years. This was further extended to all employees with no vision/blindness in March 1996. The court said that the only basis for the state policy of 2016 in restricting the benefit of enhanced age of superannuation to differently abled employees having minimum degree of disability of 70% and above was based on a representation received from the Physically Disabled Employees' Association seeking enhancement of retirement age. "It is, therefore, apparent that the decision of the State of Haryana to restrict the benefit of enhanced age of retirement only to the persons above 70% disability is not based on any intelligible differentia, nor any object is sought to be achieved. The impugned decision is apparently based only on the ground that such prayer was made in the representation of the Association of differently abled employees," the court observed. It further added that it was not clear as to how the government could come out with a policy restricting benefits of extended age for those with disability of 70% or above. "No conscious decision appears to have been taken by the State of Haryana while restricting the benefit of extended age of superannuation to the persons with disability of 70% or above or of blindness....