Judgment 1. There is no reason that this matter should remain pending. The aspect is from which the date the petitioner-appellant will get his pension. 2. The court has perused the record of the writ petition. The counter affidavit which has been filed in answer to the petition is shabby, sketchy and irresponsible. It avoids pleadings in the writ petition and gives no answer to the averments, which may have been made by the petitioner, such a defence by the State is not conducive to public justice. 3. The issue is of a prima facie case that the petitioner was in service so as to entitle him to pensionary benefits. The years in service are to be reckoned. The case which has been put up in the sketchy counter affidavit is about take over of schools during the period 1974-75. This apparently has weighed with the learned single judge hearing the matter that the petitioners pension cannot be before any date prior to the take over. The relevant aspect is that the petitioner should be in service and the presumption that at best this may be from the date o"f take over is that this date prima facie would put a teacher in a recognized service so as to come on the pay roll by the State. 4. Though the matter may not be relevant, it is on record that the petitioner was made a Headmaster on 8 April 1963. Whatever may be the reason for administrative lapses, the managing committee of the institution had suspended him on 8 February 1968. The petitioner filed an appeal to the Control Board, the Regional Deputy Director Education, Patna Division, Patna. This authority took a decision recommending the reinstatement of the petitioner and posted the petitioner at Purnea High School. This aspect of a State authority dealing with the case of the petitioner is colateral evidence that he was in service, 5. In the circumstances, there is nothing more to be demonstrated by the petitioner that he was in service except that; the record of the State itself bears out that a matter relating to him had been dealt by a State authority of the department of Education and neither the department of Education nor the petitioner were stranger to the record. 6. 6. In the circumstances, of any pension which has to be reckoned for payment to the petitioner, his service will be reckoned from 8.4.1963 till the date of his retirement on 31 January 1997. These are aspects not noticed in the judgment, which, thus, suffers from an error apparent on the face of the record. 7. The appeal is allowed.