Counsel Krishna Dallumal said the backdating exercise was not allowed under the Members of Parliament (Remuneration) Act 1980.
The lawyer said the amendment, gazetted on March 4, 2015, took away his clients’ vested rights.
“It was done retrospectively to begin from Jan 1, 2014,” he told a three-member bench chaired by Justice Lee Swee Seng.
Also on the panel were Justices Che Ruzima Ghazali and Azizul Azmi Adnan.
Krishna said that as a result of the amendment, senators and MPs who served before 2015 received a 2% pension hike based on their RM4,112.79 monthly salary.
However, their post-2015 counterparts enjoyed a similar rise based on the revised salary of RM11,000 which was implemented on Jan 1, 2015.
“This is enormous, as the rise was 167%,” he said, adding his clients were not treated equally, in violation of Article 8 of the Federal Constitution.
He said his clients were constitutionally entitled to enjoy a hike in pension based on the revised RM11,000 monthly salary.
Krishna was submitting the appeal on behalf of 26 former senators led by Idris Buang who filed an originating summons for a declaration that they were entitled to a recomputation of the revised pension that came into effect from Jan 1, 2015.
They named the chief administrator of Parliament and the government as respondents in the suit filed on Aug 15, 2019.
Their application was originally dismissed by the High Court in 2020.
In his ruling, Justice Nordin Hassan, now a Federal Court judge, held that the senators did not suffer any damage. He said the doctrine of legitimate expectation did not apply to them.
Nordin found that unlike judges and civil servants, pensions for senators and MPs were only a privilege and not a constitutional right. In contrast, he said, the rights of judges and civil servants were guaranteed under Articles 125 and 147, respectively.
Senior federal counsel Liew Horng Bin today submitted that the provisions in the amended Members of Parliament (Remuneration) Act 2015 were clear. He said the revised allowances and pensions were only applicable to senators still serving as of Jan 1, 2015, and did not apply to those who retired prior to that date.
He said the amendment had not altered the appellant’s rights as pensioners but rather conferred an increment of 2% annually to their pensions.
As such, he said, the appellants were not prejudiced, and the amendment did not infringe the provisions of the constitution.
The hearing has been adjourned to Dec 15.