From Village Councils to City Corporation: The Long Road to Fair Wages

In a significant ruling reinforcing the constitutional mandate of equality in public employment, the Bombay High Court has directed the Vasai-Virar City Municipal Corporation to extend regular pay scales, including Seventh Pay Commission benefits and arrears at 8% interest, to 28 employees originally appointed by erstwhile gram panchayats. The Division Bench comprising Justices G.S. Kulkarni and Aarti Sathe delivered the judgment on 9 March 2026 in Writ Petition No. 9442 of 2019, holding that employees discharging identical duties cannot be perpetually denied parity merely because of the manner of their initial appointments.

A Merger That Changed Everything, But Not Their Pay

The dispute traces its roots to 3 July 2009, when the State Government constituted the Vasai-Virar City Municipal Corporation by merging four municipal councils and 53 gram panchayats. The petitioners, appointed earlier as safai kamgars, clerks and peons by the gram panchayats, continued their services seamlessly under the new municipal body. Despite performing work identical to regular municipal employees, they remained on lump-sum wages ranging from ₹1,000 to ₹2,000, later upgraded only to minimum wages. Multiple representations, including one dated 24 April 2012 and an RTI query in August 2015, yielded no relief, even as the corporation’s general body acknowledged their demand in September 2012.

Equal Work Without Equal Pay: The Core Grievance

The petitioners argued that they were victims of unconstitutional discrimination. Performing the same tasks as their regular counterparts, they received neither regular pay scales nor the benefits of revised pay commissions. Relying heavily on the Supreme Court’s landmark pronouncement in State of Punjab v. Jagjit Singh (2017), they contended that the principle of “equal pay for equal work” extends to all employees performing similar duties, regardless of their contractual, casual or absorbed status. They pointed to a recent coordinate bench decision in Vinayak Kalu Jadhav v. State of Maharashtra (2023) that had granted similar relief to workers in another municipal corporation.

The corporation countered that the petitioners’ original appointments by gram panchayats suffered from procedural irregularities—no advertisements, tests or interviews—and therefore amounted to “backdoor entries.” It claimed that Section 493 of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act, read with the relevant appendix, permitted their continuation only on the same lump-sum basis. The State Government, in its affidavit, supported this stance, noting that it had rejected the corporation’s proposal for regularisation in January 2022 precisely because due process had not been followed at the time of initial appointment.

Constitutional Goal, Not Mere Slogan

Justice Kulkarni’s judgment meticulously traces the evolution of the “equal pay for equal work” doctrine from Randhir Singh v. Union of India (1982), where the Supreme Court first elevated the principle from a Directive Principle under Article 39(d) into a constitutional goal enforceable through Articles 14 and 16. The court observed that the principle is not limited to regular employees but must reach those performing identical functions, including those absorbed through mergers of local bodies.

Crucially, the Bench rejected the corporation’s attempt to distinguish the petitioners on the basis of their pre-merger appointments. Once the municipal corporation absorbed them in 2009 and continued to deploy them alongside regular staff performing identical work, the distinction lost constitutional relevance. The judgment emphatically states that denying parity because of historical circumstances of appointment would perpetuate “exploitative enslavement” in violation of human dignity.

Key Observations from the Bench

The court recorded several observations that crystallise the ruling:

> “Equal pay for equal work is not a mere demagogic slogan. It is a constitutional goal capable of attainment through constitutional remedies…”

> “An employee engaged for the same work cannot be paid less than another who performs the same duties and responsibilities. Certainly not, in a welfare State.”

> “Such an action besides being demeaning, strikes at the very foundation of human dignity.”

Directing Compliance Without Further Litigation

Allowing the petition in terms of prayers (a) and (b), the High Court ordered the Municipal Corporation to compute arrears within four weeks and pay them with 8% annual interest. It further cautioned that any delay or non-compliance would constitute a breach warranting further action, underscoring the court’s intolerance for prolonged litigation on settled principles.

The decision is poised to have immediate ramifications for scores of similarly situated employees across newly constituted municipal corporations in Maharashtra who continue on minimum wages despite performing regular functions. By reaffirming that constitutional equality cannot be defeated by administrative inertia or historical appointment irregularities, the Bombay High Court has sent a clear message: once the State accepts labour, it must pay fairly.