GURVINDER KANG Vs. DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioners are the teachers teaching in Air Force Bal Bharti School, Lodhi Road, New Delhi which is arrayed as respondent No. 3 in this case. This school is being run by Air Force Educational and Cultural Society (Regd.) which is impleaded as respondent No. 2. The demand of the petitioners is that they should be given HRA which is wrongly denied to them by the respondent school. The prayer is couched in the following words:

(2.) Mr. Bhat further submitted that all the teachers working in the private recognised schools were class in themselves and there could not be further classification within the classification and the examples quoted above, according to him, create further classification. It was also submitted that denying the HRA to some and granting the same to others and creating such classification was based on no intelligible differentia and had no nexus with the objective sought to be achieved. He relied upon the para 37 of the judgment of Supreme Court in the case of Air India etc. Vs. Nergesh Meerza reported in AIR 1981 SC 1829 which reads as under:-

(3.) Countering the aforesaid submissions of Mr. Bhat, Mr. Sanjiv Ralli, learned counsel appearing for the respondent school submitted that the petitioners were entitled to HRA only subject to the rules relating to HRA in case of Government servants. His submission was that Section 10 of the Delhi School Education Act only provides that scale of pay, allowances and other prescribed benefits of the employees of a recognised private schools cannot be less than those of the employees of the corresponding status working in Government Schools. There was no specific stipulation about HRA. However petitioners were claiming payment of HRA on the basis of Section 10 as this was one of the prescribed benefits which the teachers in Government school were getting. Thus one had to see the nature of benefit being given to the Government schools. The teachers in Government schools were getting HRA on the basis of office memorandum dated 27.11.1965 of Government of India, Ministry of Defene as amended from time to time (HRA memorandum). But for this memorandum dated 27.11.1965, teachers in Government schools would not have got HRA and accordingly petitioners could not have claimed HRA. Thus if HRA was being given to teachers in Government schools on the basis of HRA memorandum dated 27.11.1965 then the conditions attached to the grant of such HRA to the teachers in Government schools would automatically become applicable to the petitioners. Petitioner cannot get the HRA divorced from such conditions with which HRA is paid to the teachers in Government schools. He relied upon to the following averments made in the counter affidavit in support of his submission: