As a judge in the Supreme Court for more than six years, Justice Santosh Hegde delivered many landmark judgements that became the law of the land.
But he retired recently... at a meager pension of Rs 64,000 per annum.
If there was anything called an anomaly in the pension structure, it was for those who get elevated to the Supreme Court from the Bar and Justice Hegde is a prime example of the victims of that system.
A person from High Court or from judicial service getting elevated to the Supreme Court gets a much higher pension due to the long service period.
And when he was packing his bags and was readying to go back to Bangalore to lead a retired life, he was appointed chairman of the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal.
"If people complain against retired Supreme Court judges for accepting arbitration work, then they should also tell us what to do when we get a pension which is less than a upper division clerk in government," Justice Hegde said.
A widely travelled man, he has no rancours about the pension. He had delivered judgements on BCCI-Zee tussle, class bias against police officers in becoming a member of National Human Rights Commission, Pappu Yadav and many more.
But, he took pride in uniting a couple, estranged by the girl's parental pressure. "Of all the cases which I handled, I feel very satisfied in uniting a young doctor couple who were estranged due to the immense pressure exerted by the parents of the girl from Haryana," he said.
It was a difficult task, with the girl changing the statement every now under pressure from her 'influential parents' but at the end the couple came to our chambers and touched our feet for uniting them, he said.
