Can't deny benefit to similarly placed staff: Punjab and Haryana HC

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, May 6

Nearly two decades have elapsed since the Punjab and Haryana High Court made it clear that a benefit extended to a category of employees has to be extended to all similarly situated persons without requiring everyone to approach the court time and again. But the orders are apparently not being complied with.

In one of many such cases, the State of Punjab and other respondents did not mention in the reply that the petitioner-employees before the High Court were not similarly situated as the petitioners in an earlier case. But insisted that the judgment passed almost a decade ago in another matter could only be implemented with regards to the petitioners therein and not to other similarly situated.

The stand has compelled Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi’s Bench to reiterate that the benefit extended to one set of petitioners cannot be denied to the other in view of the law settled by the Division Bench in the case of “Satbir Singh versus State of Haryana”.

The assertion came on a petition filed by Avtar Singh and other petitioners against the State of Punjab and other respondents. Their counsel contended that the respondent-State declined the benefit of assured career progression scheme to junior engineers/assistant engineers working with the respondent/State on completion of “4/9 and 14 years of service”.

Justice Sethi’s Bench was also told that the non-grant of the benefit was previously challenged, following which it was held that the junior engineers, too, were entitled for the ACP scheme on completion of “4/9 and 14 years of service”. The judgment had already attained finality. The petitioners currently before the court were similarly situated and entitled to the same benefit.

Justice Sethi observed the question of law raised before the court was “whether once a benefit has been extended to a category of employees, the same has to be extended to all, who are similarly situated, or everyone needs to approach the court time and again for the grant of the same benefit”.

Justice Sethi asserted the question was no longer res integra or an entirely new and untouched matter, keeping in view the Division Bench judgment in Satbir Singh’s case. “Once it is not being disputed that the petitioners in the present petition are similarly situated as the petitioners in the earlier case, the benefit as extended to the petitioners therein cannot be denied to the present petitioners, especially in view of the law settled by the Division Bench in Satbir Singh’s case,” Justice Sethi concluded.