S. V. GANGAPURWALA, J. :- Heard.

2. The Petitioners seek directions to treat all the Grampanchayat employees as the State Government Employees and further claim that they are entitled for the benefits of the salaries and wages, allowances and pensionery benefits on par with the State Government employees, Zilla Parishad employees and Municipal employees.

3. Mr.Dixit, learned Senior counsel in his usual lucid style put forth following propositions :

(a) The Village Panchayat is the instrument of the Rural Development and is a local self - Government. The functioning of the village Panchayat is governed by the Village Panchayat Act, 1958. Various functions are entrusted to the village panchayats and for the purposes of achieving various objects, power is given to appoint the local staff by the Village Panchayat. Some of the functions performed by the Panchayat are sanitation, vaccination programme, maintenance of village roads, small irrigation water supply scheme, collection of house tax and octroi, promotion of social welfare health and family planning programmes. All these works are in the nature of supplementary government functions. The power is given to the Village Panchayat to raise its funds by way of tax or fee imposed under various heads with prior permission of the State Government. Since 1965 the State Government has stopped giving any grants for salary purposes. The employees are recruited by the Grampanchayat, such as clerk, peon and sweepers. The employees of the Grampanchayat are paid meager amount as compared to the employees of Municipal Councilor Zilla Parishad. According to the learned Senior counsel, all developmental work of the State Government are being executed and done by the Village Panchayat employees and their contribution is much higher than the Municipal Council and Zilla Parishad employees.

(b) The failure on the part of the State Government to pay to the Grampanchayat employees salaries equal to or bearing a reasonable ratio to the salaries of the Government employees is discriminatory and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India. The learned Senior counsel states that the Apex Court in a case of "State of Gujarat and another Vs. Raman Lal Keshav Lal Soni" reported in (1983) 2 Supreme Court Cases 33, has observed that the Panchayat service is a civil service of the State. The members of the Panchayat service belong to the Government and they are Government servants. The panchayat functions as an institution i.e. local self-Government.

(c) The Village Panchayat employees though work in small area but work as instrumentality of the Government for achieving the aim of the local self-Government but they are paid meagerly and are denied all the benefits given to the State Government employees. The learned Senior Counsel states that Chapter IX of the Constitution of India deals with Panchayats. Article 243-G lays down the powers and authorities of the Panchayats. The panchayat is entitled to levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties and tolls and fees in accordance with the procedure prescribed as per Article 243-H of the Constitution of India. Article 243-R says that the State may by law endow the Panchayat such powers to enable the Panchayat to function as an institution of self-Government. The learned Senior counsel relies on the provisions of Maharashtra Village Panchayat Act, wherein Section 39 gives powers to the Commissioner to remove Sarpanch and Upa-sarpanch under certain circumstances. The Act contemplates inquiry by the Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Parishad being the delegate of the State Government. Section 45 of the Act gives administrative powers and indicates the duties of the Panchayat such as to take over and maintain water supply schemes, so also prescribing giving grant-in-aid to any institution, it can make provision for carrying out any such work which is likely to promote the health, safety, education, comfort, convenience or social or economic or cultur