Captain Prem Vir Singh v. The State of Haryana, through Chief Secretary to Government, Haryana, Haryana Civil
Judgment
The petitioner seeks for a direction to treat and equate the post of Assistant Secretary, Haryana Rajya Sainik Board with the common cadre of Under-Secretaries of Haryana Civil Secretariat Establishment from the date of appointment of the petitioner and to grant him appropriate onward promotions with all consequential benefits of seniority, arrears of pay and allowances with effect from due dates or in the alternative, to grant him due promotion/upgradation as Under Secretary, then Deputy Secretary with effect from the dates the same was granted to the similarly situated incumbents with pay and allowances. Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 2 -
The contention of the petitioner is that he had been released from the Indian Army as a Captain in the year 1974 after putting 11 years of service. On the basis of eligibility and suitability, the petitioner had been appointed as Assistant Secretary, Haryana Rajya Sainik Board, a Class-I post in the Haryana Civil Secretariat in July 1976. Initially, the appointment was on ad hoc basis from 07.07.1976 to 07.01.1977. The petitioner was appointed after being relieved in the same capacity vide letter dated 22.04.1977 and the ad hoc appointment was converted into a temporary one vide order dated 20.06.1977. The temporary post was subsequently converted into a permanent one, vide order dated
06.07.1981. It was an ex-cadre post and there were two similar ex-cadre posts in the Haryana Civil Secretariat such as Superintendent (Press) and Librarian. The said posts were Class-III posts whereas the post of the petitioner from the very beginning was Class-I.
When the Haryana Secretariat Rules of 1979 were brought into force, the petitioner's name did not figure in the seniority list of Under Secretaries/Deputy Secretaries of Civil Secretariat cadre since the post in Group-A services mentioned in the rules were of Class-II post whereas the petitioner was appointed as a Class-I officer. The grievance of the petitioner is that the ex-cadre posts like the Librarian and Superintendent (Press) had been upgraded from time to time as Under Secretary and Deputy Secretary with same pay scale and special pay as admissible to the Under Secretary/Deputy Secretary of Haryana Civil Secretariat Establishment, but the petitioner did not have the benefit of such upgradation. While persons, who were Class-III employees of Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 3 - Haryana Civil Secretariat cadre reached the status of Deputy Secretary/Under Secretary and granted appropriate pay scales, the petitioner did not have such a benefit. The petitioner cites instances of cases where persons who had worked under the petitioner namely, Rajinder Singh, Sagar Mal, Charanjit Lal Manchanda, Manohar Lal Mahajan, Iqbal Rai Gulati and Ram Chander Ahuja, had ultimately reached upto to the posts of Under Secretary or Deputy Secretary and even persons who were juniors to the petitioner in different branches of the Haryana Civil Secretariat, had been working as Deputy Secretary at the time of filing of the writ petition. The petitioner's claim was that the duties and responsibilities to the post of Assistant Secretary, Haryana Rajya Sainik Board were more arduous and onerous than the duties and responsibilities performed by the Under Secretary of Haryana Civil Secretariat establishment. The petitioner officiated as Under Secretary (Defence) on 23.06.1983 in the place of Under Secretary of the Secretariat Establishment and continued as such upto 28.02.1986. But he was given the pay scale of Under Secretary of Secretariat Establishment without special pay. He was again reverted to the post of
28.02.1986 when the petitioner rejoined his post under protest by giving representation on 21.03.1986. The petitioner claims to have made a further representation to the Chairman, Pay Anomaly Committee, Haryana Civil Secretariat, with a copy to respondent with reference to his earlier representations. Representations gave place to upgradation by order dated 16.04.1991 to the post of the petitioner as Deputy Secretary with immediate effect as a measure personal to the petitioner on a scale Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 4 - of Rs.3000-4500 but without special pay whereas the scale of the post of Deputy Secretary in Haryana Secretariat Establishment was Rs.3700- 5000 with Rs.400/- as special pay.
From the perusal of the petition, it could be noted that the grievance of the petitioner was either that the post of the Assistant Secretary of the Sainik Board should be included in the mainstream of Haryana Civil Secretariat establishment cadre and equated with the Civil Secretariat with the equation of pay scales, promotion and status as enjoined by the persons in the Civil Secretariat establishment or in the alternative, the post ought to be upgraded as Under Secretary w.e.f.
01.09.1978 and Deputy Secretary w.e.f. 28.02.1984 when the holders of similar ex-cadre posts in the Haryana Civil Secretariat in the Press, and in the Librarian Section were promoted.
The contention raised on behalf of the State is that the claim of the petitioner is hopelessly barred by limitation. Referring to the fact that the petitioner's main job was to assist the Secretary, Sainik Board in several activities regarding the welfare of the ex-servicemen in the State, the pay scale to the post of the Secretary, Rajya Sainik Board was itself Rs.3700-5000 which was equivalent to the pay scale to the post of the Deputy Secretary to Government of Haryana with the only difference that while the special pay of Rs.400/- was given to the officers of the HSS (Haryana Secretariat Service), the said special pay was not admissible to the incumbent of the post of Secretary of the Sainik Board. The justification for not allowing special pay is that the sphere of work of incumbent of the said post was only confined to looking after the Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 5 - activities of the welfare of the ex-servicemen. Being an ex-service high ranking officer, he would have had the requisite experience and the background for manning the said post as Deputy Secretary, but to a person in the Secretariat, the post of Deputy Secretary or the higher post on which a Clerk working is the highest post that he could aspire to be promoted. In realitiy, a Clerk having more than 25-30 years of experience could hardly be expected to be promoted as Under Secretary depending upon various factors such as, availability of the post etc. When the Secretary himself was working without special pay, the petitioner who was an Assistant Secretary in the Sainik Board could not ask for such a benefit. The Haryana Secretariat Service Rules of the year 1979 made provision only for cadre posts and there was no question of assigning seniority to the petitioner in the cadre of Under Secretaries/Deputy Secretaries which posts were in the hierarchy of clerical cadre of the Secretariat service.
It was further contended in defence that the comparison of the petitioner with persons alleged to be juniors to him in Class-III posts was inappropriate. The officials mentioned by the petitioner were actually appointed as Clerks in the erstwhile Punjab Civil Secretariat as early as in the year 1944 and 1956, while the petitioner himself had joined the services on ad hoc appointment only in the year 1976. It must be noticed that the petitioner was himself not a member of the Haryana Secretariat service. The petitioner is governed by the rules contained by the Punjab Civil Service which was different from the Secretariat Service Rules. The petitioner's appointment of Assistant Secretary of the Sainik Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 6 - Board itself could not be taken to be an appointment to the civil post in Class-I since the method of recruitment, educational qualifications, experience and service conditions were all at variance with the isolated ex-cadre post that the petitioner was holding.
The parity which the petitioner claims for upgradation on the basis that similar ex-cadre post of persons working in the Press and in the Libarary was sought to be done by the State is resisted as untenable on the ground that they were all personal to them taking note of the fact that those officials were already in State Government service and at one time in the regular cadre of the Punjab/Haryana Civil Secretariat. It was pointed out that they were in fact recruited as Clerks in the erstwhile Punjab State at least two decades before the joining of the petitioner in civil appointment. They had represented that their juniors/officials of comparable seniority in the Secretariat had already been promoted to higher posts and it was only on the basis of such representation that further promotions were offered as personal measures. Countering the claims of the petitioner that the duties of the petitioner were more arduous, it is contended by the State that an official in the Secretariat with more than 25-30 years of experience gets merely a lean chance of attaining to the post of Under Secretary/Deputy Secretary, although such a person gets conversant with the service matters and other miscellaneous work in Government departments.
An Assistant Secretary, on the other hand, merely deals with the activities of the welfare of ex-servicemen. The parity claimed is, therefore, resisted as untenable. It is also contended by the Board that even the temporary manning of his duty as Under Secretary (Defence) Civil Writ Petition No.9466 of 1991 - 7 - was merely a stop gap arrangement due to administrative exigencies and was subsequently released. It is trite law that the temporary officiation in any higher post does not give a right to the post.
The matter could only be seen from the context of the relevant rules that govern the service of the petitioner. If he was manning ex-cadre post in the Secretariat service, he cannot treat himself on par as a regular employee borne in the cadre of the Secretariat service. The operation of the respective service rules are different and so are the duties. The Court shall not be the institution which will decide of scales of pay or redress the claims of assessment of the nature of work for fixation of appropriate scales. There shall be more the duties of Pay Commissions than what the Court will do to intervene. The repeated representations have been periodically addressed by the respondents with justifications as brought out in the order as well as in the reply filed by the respondents. A claim for parity of an ex-cadre employee with scales of a regular cadre is impermissible as held, by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Ran Singh Malik v State of Haryana (2002) 3 SCC 182.
The petitioner cannot have any legal justification for the reliefs sought for in the writ petition. The writ petition is, therefore, dismissed. There shall be however no direction as to costs.
28.06.2010 sanjeev (K.KANNAN) JUDGE
Precedent status how later indexed judgments have treated this case
No known negative treatment found in the Courts & Cases corpus.
This is a result about the indexed corpus, not a finding that the judgment remains good law. Coverage may be incomplete.