Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. :- (on behalf of P.N. Bhagwati J. and himself). We fully endorse what has been said by our learned brother Chandrachud, J., but the profound depths of equal justice in public employment touched in his final paragraph (with which we ardently agree) impel a few concurring observations of our own.

2. In this unequal world the proposition that all men are equal has working limitations, since absolute equality leads to procrustean cruelty or sanctions indolent inefficiency. Necessarily, therefore, an imaginative and constructive modus vivendi between commonness and excellence must be forged to make the equality clause viable. This pragmatism produced the judicial gloss of classification and differentia , with the by-products of equality among equals and dissimilar things having to be treated differently. The social meaning of Arts. 14 to 16 is neither dull uniformity nor specious talentism . It is a process of producing quality out of larger areas of equality extending better facilities to the latent capabilities of the lowly. It is not a methodology of substitution of pervasive and solvenly mediocrity for activist and intelligent - but not snobbish and uncom