JUDGMENT :

VIKRAM NATH, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. These appeals assail the common impugned order dated 28.12.2017 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Gujarat in LPA No. 765/2017 in Special Civil Application No. 3210/2016 along with other allied appeals. The LPA was preferred by the respondent State of Gujarat against the order of Single Judge dated 19.04.2017 directing the State of Gujarat to remove the anomaly in the pay of the appellants Petitioners qua their juniors by stepping up their pay. The Division Bench allowed the LPA by the State and set aside the Single Judge’s order.

FACTUAL MATRIX

3. The matters pertain to the issue whether or not the principle of stepping up of pay of an employee on the basis of the pay of his junior, is applicable in the present case, where the appellants are put on a lesser pay scale than the Assistant Professors who were appointed before them as ad hoc lecturers and subsequently regularized. The genesis of controversy goes back to the period of 1984-95 when 111 persons came to be engaged as Lecturers on ad-hoc basis in various Government Colleges. The University Grants Commission¹ [UGC, hereinafter] has framed the Regulations of 1998, inte