Chandigarh, Oct. 19 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has held that employees of Indian Council for Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) of Panjab University (PU) are entitled to pensionary benefits at par with other employees of the university. The HC division bench of justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and justice Rohit Kapoor upheld a single judge bench order of January this year, observing that "..so far as the regional centres are concerned, the applicable conditions of service are the conditions of the regional university with which the centre is attached. The guidelines issued by the ICSSR-Delhi, in respect of establishment of regional centres, also contains a specific stipulation that the provisions of the host university would be applicable upon the employees of such regional centres.," the bench observed. The four petitions from ICSSR, PU, employees were pending since 2007, in which they had challenged the varsity's decision to decline pensionary benefits to the centre's employees on the grounds that in the absence of a pension scheme at the centre (Delhi), the petitioner be given the Central Provident Fund (CPF) benefits and other retiral benefits as applicable in Delhi. In January 2025, a single judge bench had ruled in favour of the employees. This decision was challenged by the PU's centre before the division bench earlier this month, which now has dismissed PU's appeal. It was set up in 1977, which serves as a nodal agency for promoting and coordinating social science research across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Leh Ladakh, and Chandigarh. Various other centres were set up across the country under the ministry of education, to foster and support social science research nationwide. The centre supports research in disciplines including Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Education, Psychology, Law, History, Gender Studies, Journalism, Strategic Studies, Environmental Studies. The court observed that the appellant cannot contend that the benefit of pension would not be admissible to the employees of the regional centres on the ground that there is no scheme for payment of pension to them. "The right to receive pension is a valuable right which is derived by the respondents (employees) from the contract of employment itself as per which their conditions of services are to be governed by Panjab University Rules. The Panjab University Rules do contemplate provision for payment of pension," the bench said. "Any executive lethargy or inadequacy cannot come to the aid of the appellant to resist the claim of payment of pension to the respondents/petitioners. There is thus no merit in these appeals," the court said, while dismissing the appeals....