Dear All,
To the best of my knowledge and belief, period more than 6 months is to be rounded off to the next full year. According to this ruling, period in excess of six months which is 11 months and 17 days is to be rounded off to the next full year that is full 5 years, making the employee eligible entitled to payment of gratuity. As suggested earlier by some friends, the concerned employee may apply to her employer for payment of gratuity in the prescried form and await reply. Certainly the response whould be positive. In case it negative, then the aggrieved employee may apply to the controlling authority for relief.
To avoid this, the concerned employee should have attempted to complete 5 year tenure with his/her former employer. The notice of 90 days is minimum period. The law does not forbid anybody from giving more than 90 days notice. In this case the notice period could have been 103 days. The new employer would have also not objected to delay of 13 days in order to help the employee comply with eligility criteria for gratuity. Others may take lesson and try to comply with eligibilty criteria for such short durations. Important issue here is whether notice period can be of more than 90 days or not. My assertion is that it can be more than 90 days, not short of 90 days in any case. I wish success to elamita in his/her efforts to get gratuity from her former employee and also note the lesson which could avoid such complications in future.