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Inderjit Singh Sodhi and Others v. The Chairman, Punjab State Electricity Board

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 674Decided 3 Dec 2020
Civil Appeal No. 3837 of 2020
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Hemant Gupta · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

The appellants were Assistant Engineers with the Punjab State Electricity Board who had reached that post through promotion from Junior Engineer, rather than through direct recruitment. They claimed they were entitled to the same "time-bound promotional scale" (an automatic pay upgrade after 9 and 16 years of service for employees stuck without regular promotion) that had been given to two colleagues who were junior to them but had joined as direct recruits. A Single Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ruled in the appellants' favour, but the Division Bench reversed that, so the employees appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Court examined two Board circulars governing time-bound pay scales and held that the enhanced "Second Circular" scale was available only to directly recruited engineers, while promoted engineers like the appellants were governed by the ordinary "First Circular" scale. Since the appellants had already been promoted to Assistant Engineer before completing 9 years of service, they did not qualify for the time-bound benefit at all, and they could not claim parity with the directly recruited colleagues because the two categories were treated differently for valid, non-arbitrary reasons recognized in the Board's own regulations and in an earlier Supreme Court ruling (Krishan Kumar Vij). The Court also declined to let the appellants raise, for the first time in written submissions, a new argument about entitlement after 23 years of service. All three appeals were accordingly dismissed, upholding the High Court's Division Bench ruling.

Lesson Learnt

Employees promoted internally and employees hired by direct/open recruitment can lawfully be treated differently for pay-scale benefits if the employer's own service rules draw that distinction for a legitimate reason: simply being senior in years of service does not automatically entitle a promotee to the same perks as a direct recruit.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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