Supreme Court<\/b>: Deciding the nature of Voluntary Retirement from Service (VRS) Schemes, the Court explained that where the Scheme is contractual in nature and not statutory in character, provisions of the Contract Act, 1872 would apply. It was further held that the VRS Scheme floated by the employer would be treated as invitation to offer and the application submitted by the employees pursuant thereto is an offer which does not amount to resignation in praesenti and the offer can be withdrawn during the validity period. This would be the position even when there is a clause in the Scheme that offer once given cannot be withdrawn at all. However, exception to this principle is that in such cases offer is to be withdrawn during the validity period of the Scheme and not thereafter even when if it is not accepted during the period of the Scheme.<\/p>\n
The Bench of Dr. A.K. Sikri and R.K. Agrawal, JJ was dealing with the VRS Scheme for the employees of Madhya Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation which provided certain conditions and also a specific form in which the application\/option for VRS under the Scheme was to be made. Further, one of the conditions in the VRS Scheme was that once the application form for opting VRS is submitted, it would not be open to the applicant to withdraw the same. This Scheme was declared open on July 01, 2005 and was to last till August 01, 2005. However, in October, 2006, the validity of the Scheme was later on extended till July 31, 2007. Hence, the question that arose before the Court was whether validity of the Scheme was extended up to July 31, 2007 and the employees could withdraw their offer before this date or the date on which the initial scheme expired, i.e. August 01, 2005 and the withdrawal thereafter was not permissible.<\/p>\n