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Sabha Shanker Dube v. Divisional Forest Officer & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 1055Decided 14 Nov 2018
Civil Appeal No. 10956 of 2018
Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice L. Nageswara Rao

Background

The appellants were daily-rated workers in Group 'D' posts in the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department who sought regularisation of their jobs and the minimum pay scale given to regular employees doing the same work. The Allahabad High Court's Single Judge and then a Division Bench rejected the minimum-pay-scale claim, relying on Supreme Court precedents holding that daily wagers are not entitled to regular pay scales. By the time of the Supreme Court hearing, the appellants' counsel narrowed the dispute to just one question: whether they were entitled to the minimum of the regular pay scale, not regularisation itself.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that its own more recent and comprehensive ruling in State of Punjab v. Jagjit Singh (2017) had settled that temporary/daily-wage employees performing the same duties as regular employees are entitled to the minimum of the regular pay scale, as an application of "equal pay for equal work" and basic human dignity. Since the High Court's view to the contrary rested on older precedents that stood superseded by Jagjit Singh, the Court set aside the High Court's judgments and allowed the appeals, directing the State of Uttar Pradesh to pay the appellants the minimum of the pay scale applicable to regular employees in equivalent posts, effective 1 December 2018. The Court expressly did not decide the separate question of regularisation of their service, nor the State's objection that some appellants were not actually working on sanctioned Group 'D' posts.

Lesson Learnt

A worker doing the same job as a permanently appointed employee is entitled to at least the minimum of that post's regular pay scale under the "equal pay for equal work" principle, even while their claim to permanent regularisation of the job itself remains a separate and undecided question.

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

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