Cuttack, Aug. 15: Orissa High Court has asked the state government to amend the service conditions of public prosecutors related to pension after superannuation of service to attract competent advocates.

The court expressed concern that "in the Odisha State Prosecution Service (OSPS) Rules there is direct recruitment to the cadre of prosecutors after the age of 35 years or 45 years as the case may be but there is no pension scheme so as to attract such service for the competent persons who are esteemed very high in their society and their role also is equally important in the justice delivery system".

"If a prosecutor after entering to the government service at the age of 35 years or above has no retirement benefits, then competent advocates will not apply for selection so as to allow the selection process to be more fair and transparent," the court observed.

"In order to attract meritorious and competent candidates to the posts of assistant public prosecutor, additional public prosecutor, public prosecutor, government pleader or additional government pleader as the case may be, the rules governing their recruitment and service condition must be attractive and comfortable so that they will defend the state in a proper and befitting manner," the court further observed.

The high court observed: "Keeping in mind the importance of the job, we hope and trust that the state government should take steps to amend the Odisha State Prosecution Service Rules so as to keep the pension provisions in the rule so that the prosecutors will not face problem because of their short span of service."

The division bench of Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice D.P. Choudhury observed this while disposing of on August 1, a petition filed by one Sk Nizamuddin, who had retired on July 31, 2009, after joining as public prosecutor at the age of 50 years and was denied minimum pension as he had not given minimum service of 10 years. He had turned to the high court after not getting any relief from the State Administrative Tribunal.

While quashing the tribunal order, the high court said it was a fit case to relax the rules and fill up the gap of 45 days short of 10 years of the petitioner's service as prosecutor by adding his past five years experience as additional public prosecutor and 20 years as legal practitioner.

"We direct the state government to place the matter before the Governor for consideration of relaxation of the rules and the finance department to opine accordingly. The exercise should be completed within a period of four weeks," the high court said.

"At the same time, we also request the state government to consider if the age of superannuation of the public prosecutors is raised to 65 years so that the term of minimum 10 years to get minimum pension would not arise and the prosecutors when getting more experience could be able to deliver excellent service by participating in the justice delivery system," the high court said.