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PETITIONER:

TELECOMMUNICATION RESEARCH CENTRE SCIENTIFICOFFICERS (CLASS

Vs.

RESPONDENT:

UNION OF INDIA & OTHERS

DATE OF JUDGMENT16/01/1987

BENCH:

VENKATARAMIAH, E.S. (J)

BENCH:

VENKATARAMIAH, E.S. (J)

SINGH, K.N. (J)

CITATION:

1987 AIR 490 1987 SCR (1)1007

1987 SCC (1) 582 JT 1987 (1) 152

1987 SCALE (1)62

ACT:

Constitution of India, 1950: Articles 14 and 16: Civil

Services-Pay parity--Scientific and Technical Officers,

class I, Telecommunication Research Centre--Direct recruits

through Union Public Service Commission--Denied special pay

admissible to--Departmental Transferred Officers Class

I--Held discriminatory and ultra vires.

HEADNOTE:

The recruitment to Class I posts in the Telecommunica-

tion Research Centre of the Posts and Telegraphs Department

is made partly by direct recruitment through the Union

Public Service Commission and partly through transfer of

Group A and Group B Field Officers. The officers brought

into the Centre on transfer were being paid special pay in

addition to their pay. The direct recruits were denied this

privilege.

The petitioners 2 to 22, members of the first petition-

er-Association, who belong to the direct recruits category

and are working in the Centre on the same posts, and possess

same qualifications, discharge same functions and duties as

the transferred officers, and are in the same pay scales,

assailed the denial of special pay to them as discriminatory

and violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.

Their claim was contested by the Department and the discrim-

ination was sought to be justified on the ground that the

direct recruits were. specifically recruited to the Centre

for a limited purpose and their capability, as against

transferred officers, selected by the Union Public Service

Commission after rigorous competitive examination, of tak-

ing. over a complete group and directing them to fruitful

research was doubtful.

Allowing the writ petitions, the Court,

HELD: 1. Denial of special pay to Class I direct re-

cruits in the Telecommunication Research Centre amounts to

violation of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. They

are entitled to the special pay at the same rates at which

it is paid to the transferred officers working in that

Centre with effect from the date from which the latter have

been drawing it. [1013B-C]

1008

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2.1 It is not the case of the Government that the peti-

tioners are not competent and are not able to discharge

their duties. All the relevant things such as qualifica-

tions, functions, duties and responsibilities are the same

as between the direct recruits and the transferred offi-

cials. Their scale of pay is also the same. [1011G-H]

2.2 The special pay is not being paid to the transferred

officials for compensating their displacement or for their

qualifications. It is not deputation allowance. It is paid

for the arduous and special nature of the functions to be

discharged in the Telecommunication Research Centre. The

rigorous test is applied while transferring them to the

Centre to prevent persons of inferior caliber amongst them

getting into it. It does not mean that persons who are

directly recruited and working in the Centre are inferior to

those who enter the Centre by transfer. Nor it could be said

that the transferred officials had to perform in the Centre

duties which were not in their general line. There was,

thus, no justification to deny the special pay at the same

rates to the direct recruits working in that Centre. [1011H;

1012A-B; 1013A]

Randhir Singh v. Union of India and Others, [1982] 3

SCR, 298 and M.P. Singh & Others v. Union of India, Writ

Petition Nos. 13097--13176 of 1984, decided on January 16,

1987, applied.