B.C. Nagaraj & Anr. vs. The State of Karnataka
Background
The appellants were retired Physical Education Directors in Karnataka government colleges. A 1999 government order granted revised UGC pay scales retrospectively from 1996 to Physical Education Directors, but the appellants were denied this benefit based on a later 2008 government order that limited the benefit prospectively and disallowed arrears. Their challenges before the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal and the High Court both failed. They pointed out that another similarly-placed retired employee, Shri N. Ramesh, had earlier won an identical claim in the High Court (a decision that became final after the State did not seek review), and that even as late as 2014, other similarly placed retired librarians had been granted the same benefit.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court found that the State Government had accepted and implemented the favourable ruling in the Ramesh case without ever challenging it further, and had even continued granting the same benefit to other similarly placed employees years later, in 2014. Having consciously let that precedent stand and having extended the same benefit elsewhere, the State could not now selectively deny it to the appellants by invoking the very government order that had not been placed before the courts in the Ramesh case. The Court quashed the High Court's judgment and directed the State to extend the pay-scale benefits to the appellants within three months, while clarifying that the ruling would apply to other pending similar cases but not open the door to fresh claims by employees who had never challenged the denial.
Lesson Learnt
A government cannot pick and choose which retired employees benefit from a favourable court ruling when it has already accepted that ruling for one employee and continued applying it to others: such selective denial to similarly placed persons is treated as unfair and legally unsustainable discrimination.