Frankly speaking, I was not aware of the intricacies of the denial of leave encashment to CRS employees as I thought it was not allowed anywhere.  I will quote below some of the paragraphs which shows that IBA is totally negative towards bank employees and can not be trusted by the Aam Banker.    I am sure there will be many more skeletons that will tumble out soon as now bankers have started following the cases in Courts.   Some of the interesting quotes from the circular are :-

     (1)  It was in year  2000 (i.e. about 15 years back ) that IBA decided not to allow Leave encashment and Travelling Allowance on Retirement for officers whose services are compulsorily retired as a punishment.

      (2)IBA was well aware that SBI was permitting encashment of leave on compulsory retirement as per the provisions of their OSR.   Thus, IBA had created two set of rules : one for SBI and another for Public Sector bank employees.   They never bothered to check whether it is legal to deny the employees of PS Banks the right to leave encashment which was available to SBI.    This clearly proves that HR policies of SBI are undoubtedly  more positive than what IBA team thinks (who are headed by ex-CMDs and serving CMDs of banks) and PS heads boost of.   It is now clear that  serving CMDs firmly believed that in case some mistake is committed by a bank officer, then even his / her terminal dues must be shrinked to the maximum extent.   It is a shame on the part of the CMDs that inspite of knowing well SBI is paying these as per law, they never though to review this decision in last 15 years.  

     (3)To my dismay, IBA circular even mentions that Govt of India in February 2006, had also decided that in cases where government servants are compulsorily retired as a measure of punishment , the benefit of encashment of earned leave at the time of such retirement shall be allowed.   Thus for last 9 years IBA was fully aware that it is against the government policy to deny such encahment of leave.  Still they decided to continue with this illegal policy of denying leave encashment to CSR bankers.

      (4)Now comes the worst part.   Inspite of knowing that it is illegal to deny the leave encashment to CSR bankers, the bank HR teams and IBA team ganged up and when these bankers went to Court, instead of releasing their dues, they decided to fight the cases tooth and nail.  Ultimately, as per IBA circular, some of the affected officers approached various High Courts and got relief in their favour.  In this process crores of rupees must have been spent in payment to bank lawyers,  hundreds of hours must have been wasted by Law officers of the banks in briefing such lawyers, and hundreds of hours must have been wasted of Courts only as IBA WAS ARROGANT AND ARBITRARY DECIDED NOT TO PAY CSR BANKERS THE LEAVE ENCASHMENT.   This is the reason why our legal system is on the verge of collapse as whosoever has money (specially free) and power can easily misuse the same and delay the process of legal remedy. 

 Thus, it appears that now IBA was facing the challenges of contempt of Court and none of the IBA team or CMDs of PS Banks wanted to go to jail for contempt of Court and thus they were forced to release this circular.

 It is the biggest shame for CMDs of all PS Banks and the CEO of IBA.   Each one of them needs to hang their head in shame today that for last 15 years, PS Bankers have been denied what was legally due to them.

 Now questions arises what about bankers who were denied the leave encashment since 2000 inspite of that being paid by SBI, Government of India and instructions of High Courts?   The circular only says that it is applicable only from April 2015.  

 To avoid further complications, there is a need that IBA should issue instructions that all those who were denied this since 2000 should be paid leave encashment alongwith interest @ 15% p.a. (compounded quarterly) or they should be paid encashment at the current salaries in the equivalent grade.

 I will be soon writing a separate article about how retired bankers have been ignored in this settlement inspite of so many cases decided in favour of bankers and many more are at advanced stage of judgment.