IMPORTANT POINT
The obligation of the employer as a model employer in a Welfare State and the application of previous judgments to extend benefits to all similarly circumstanced employees.

JUDGMENT :

All these appeals having substantially similar factual and legal matrices, seek to lay a challenge to the learned Single Judge’s orders whereby, subject writ petitions having been favoured, the following direction has been issued:

“In the result, the respondents are directed to re-fix the salary of the petitioners by granting them the additional annual increment, and consequentially, also refit and pay their pension along with the arrears of salary and pension accrued so far, within a period of three months from the date of receipt of a copy of this order. The Writ Petitions are accordingly allowed.”

2. Learned Senior Panel Counsel appearing for the appellant-Management vehemently argues for the invalidation of the impugned judgment on the following lines:

(i) That the Apex Court decision in KPTCL vs. C.P.MUNDINAMANI (2023) SCC OnLine SC 401 has the effect of doctrine of prospective overruling and therefore, no benefit could have been granted to the employees that have retired earlier.

(ii) The said decision of the Apex Court is a judgment in personam and therefore, binds only parties thereto, and not others. That being the position, it could not have been treated as a judgment in rem and therefore, no relief could have been granted to other employees in the writ petitions.

(iii) The writ petitions ought to have been dismissed because of delay & latches and acquiescence since they would defeat equity; this aspect have not been duly considered by the learned Single Judge.

(iv) The writ petitioners who were holding different posts/positions could not have maintained one single petition and this aspect of the matter has not been duly treated by the learned Single Judge.

3. Having heard the learned counsel for the appellants and having perused the appeal papers, we decline indulgence in these appeals for the following reasons:

(a) Shorn off thickness of the appeal papers, the matter lies in a narrow compass. The appellants herein who were the opposing parties in the writ petitions answer the description of ‘other authorities’ employed in Article 12 of the Constitution in the light of R.D.SHETTY vs. INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY OF INDIA, AIR 1979 SC 1628. In other words, the 1st appellant-KPTCL being a cent per cent public sector undertaking of the Government of Karnataka, answers the definition of ‘State’ under Article 12 and therefore, it cannot act as a private employer. Every Article 12-Entity has to conduct itself as a model employer, to say the least. Such an employer in a Welfare State is expected to treat the pensioners with soft gloves since they are in the evening of life, having retired after putting in a long & spotless service during their productive years.

(b) The Apex Court in C.P.Mundinamani, supra disposed off appellants’ C.A.No.2471 of 2023. Even according to their learned panel counsel, the said matter was dismissed ‘directing the Appellant Corporation to grant one annual increment which the original Writ Petitioners earned on the last day of their service for rendering their services preceding one year from the date of retirement with good behaviour and efficiently’. This is what has been stated in so many words at para 5 of the Memorandum of Writ Appeals. There is nothing that indicates that grant of relief was confined to the employees who were parties to the said decision eo nomine. It has been long settled in the realm of Service Jurisprudence that when Constitutional Courts grants relief to an employee in his individual case, other employees need not rush to the court corridor once again to litigate. The employer which answers the description of ‘State’ under Article 12 of the Constitution, on its own has to extend the same benefit to all other similarly circumstanced employees. This is what an employment in a ‘Welfare State’ means. An argument to the contrary would render the word ‘socialist’ enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution, a meaningless rhetoric. This inarticulate premise has animated