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Maheshkumar Chandulal Patel vs. State of Gujarat

Not available · 2024 INSC 608Decided 14 Aug 2024
Not available
Justice Vikram Nath · Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra

Background

The appellants were Assistant Professors directly selected and appointed by the Gujarat Public Service Commission (GPSC) in 2001. Separately, a group of 111 lecturers who had earlier worked on an ad hoc basis from 1984-95 were later regularized, and in 2015 the State government granted 85 of them Senior Scale/Selection Grade pay by counting their earlier ad hoc service, which made these ad hoc-origin lecturers (who were junior to the appellants) draw a higher salary than the appellants. The appellants, without formally challenging the government resolutions granting that benefit to the ad hoc group, instead sought "stepping up" of their own pay under Rule 21 of the Gujarat Civil Services (Pay) Rules, 2002: a rule that lets a senior employee's pay be raised to match a junior's, in certain anomaly situations. A Single Judge of the Gujarat High Court granted this relief, but the Division Bench reversed it, and the appellants approached the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that Rule 21's stepping-up benefit did not apply here because one of its essential conditions, that the pay anomaly must arise directly from the application of Rule 21 itself, was not satisfied. The higher pay drawn by the junior lecturers stemmed not from Rule 21 but from a separate government decision to count their earlier ad hoc service toward Senior Scale/Selection Grade eligibility, which is a distinct legal basis. The Court relied on its own earlier precedents (R. Swaminathan and M. Suryanarayana Rao) holding that a junior drawing higher pay because of counted ad hoc/officiating service is not the kind of "anomaly" that stepping-up rules are meant to fix. The Court also noted it would be inequitable to let the appellants benefit from years of ad hoc service they never actually rendered. The appeals were dismissed, upholding the Division Bench's decision.

Lesson Learnt

A senior government employee cannot claim pay parity with a junior under a "stepping up" rule simply because the junior earns more: that remedy only applies when the pay gap is a direct mechanical result of the rule itself, not when the junior's higher pay flows from a separate, legitimate policy decision (like counting past ad hoc service) that the senior never challenged.

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

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