₹1 hike in pay scale: Punjab and Haryana high court says officers responsible should be hauled up

The Punjab and Haryana high court has deprecated the role of senior officers of the Haryana government in not implementing the court orders passed in a pay scale dispute between engineers and the government.

“We find that the action of the state authorities is committing mockery of the court’s orders and certain officers, who passed such orders, deserve to be hauled up,” the bench of justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma and justice Meenakshi I Mehta observed while dismissing an appeal of the state.

The court was hearing a 2012 plea from the Haryana Federation of Engineers, Hisar, who had approached the HC seeking directions to fix pay scale of executive engineer one step higher as compared to that of the assistant engineer, and pay scale of superintending engineer one step higher as compared to that of the executive engineer with effect from 1989.

The post of assistant engineer is the initial post in the public works department and is the feeder post for executive engineer, and executive engineer is the feeder post for superintending engineer. Therefore, pay scales of these three posts have always been hierarchically different — assistant engineers in the lowest scale, executive engineers in the next higher scale and superintending engineers in the scale one step higher than that of the executive engineers. However, during the period of May 1989 and December 1995, assistant engineers were getting higher pay scale than that of executive engineers and equivalent to that of superintending engineers, despite the latter two being promotional posts. This was the bone of contention between the government and engineers.

In 2012, the high court decided a 1994 plea in petitioners’ favour and directed government to revise the pay scales. However, while implementing the court order, the government gave only ₹1 enhancement in the revised pay scale for the post of executive engineer and ₹2 hike in the case of superintending engineers.

As per the association, this was patently illegal as same does not make the scale one step higher to the feeder post as directed by high court in 2012. The single judge bench had in October 2023 allowed the plea from engineers’ association and directed the government to release all consequential benefits, including arrears of salary/revised pay scales with effect from 1989, when the pay scale in question was notified. However, the order was still not implemented and the state government preferred an appeal last year after a delay of 229 days.

“We deprecate the practice adopted by the officers in making lip service to the court’s orders,” the division bench said while dismissing the appeal on merits as well on the grounds of delay and directed that implementation of the order would be made positively in terms of the observation made by the single judge bench.

“..in the ordinary course although it would not direct state authorities to grant a particular pay scale for the higher post, however, the single judge has taken into consideration all the aspects and the pay scales into consideration to reach to the findings,” the bench further recorded.