TIRUMALA TIRUPATI DEVASTHANAM Vs. L A RAMASWAMY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Special leave granted.

(2.) There is no dispute that the teachers namely K. N. Nagi Reddy, S. Poli naidu, B. Ramakrishnaiah and N. Dattatreyulu were serving in a school belonging to the appellant-institution. That school, it appears, was closed and instead of transferring the said teachers to the present school, the appellants retrenched them. However, immediately thereafter, they re-employed them in the present school. But, at the time of the re-employment, their salary which they were drawing at the closed school, was protected. They were not given the benefit of their earlier service even for the purpose of seniority in the present school. The respondent-writ petitioners are the teachers in the present school. They approached the High Court by the present writ petition making a grievance that the said four, teachers though junior to them were paid salary which was higher than their's. The learned Single Judge accepted the plea and granted the respondents the same salary as was being drawn by the said four teachers and with retrospective effect. In the appeal, the Division Bench while maintaining the order of the learned Single Judge limited the benefit of the higher salary to a period of three years from the date of filing of the writ petition. The reasoning given by both the Courts below is based on the principle of "equal pay for equal work". Unfortunately, it is not noticed by them that in the present case, the appellants had in fact done injustice to the said four teachers. Since the school in which they were serving also belonged to them, when it was closed, the proper and legal course to adopt was to transfer the teachers to the present school. If that was done, not only their higher salary but also their seniority would have been protected and they might have been senior to most of the respondent-teachers. It is true that against their order of retrenchment the four teachers did not approach any Court. That did not mean that the injustice done to them could not be remedied in some other manner. The appellants probably tried to undo the injustice by protecting their higher salary which they were drawing in that school. In the facts and circumstances of the case, therefore, the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work'' as the High Court has done was unwarranted. It is not the case of the respondents that the said teachers, when they were retrenched, had derived any benefit. We are, therefore, of the view that merely because the four teachers' higher salary was protected, the respondents were not entitled to the same higher salary. In the circumstances, the appeal is allowed and the decision of the High Court is set aside. There will be no order as to costs.