Judgment

Thomas, J.-Some Judges whose function was dispensation of justice had to approach the High Court for justice based on the celebrated doc­trine “equal pay for equal work” but they were non-suited by a Division Bench of that High Court. They were Judges of higher judici­ary in the subordinate level. They have now come to the Supreme Court with this appeal by special leave. It is interesting that, in the meanwhile, two of them have become Judges of the same High Court of Bombay as efflux of a decade in between has changed the hierarchiel status of the parties who initiated this legal action. When they filed the writ petition in the High Court they were District and Sessions Judges. One of them has since retired from service but the cause which they espoused survives.

2. The nub of their grievance is this: When the scale of pay of their counterparts in the Union Territory of Delhi was increased, appel­lants, while working in the same cadre in the Union Territory of Goa, were not given that pay scale. It infringes, according to them, the principle enshrined in the Constitution.

3. Facts are simple. On 20.12.1961 the Territories of Goa, Daman and Diu were liberated from the suzerai