YOGESWARA PANICKER Vs. KERALA STATE INSTITUTE FOR LANGUAGES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners in these Original Petitions are employees of the respondent, the Kerala State Institute for Languages. The petitioners are working on the administrative side. Some of the petitioners are working as Binders, Sweepers etc in the press under the management of the respondent. As per Ext. P1 dated 7.10.1986 produced in OP No. 4550 of 1996 the Government allowed to enhance the age of retirement of the officers belonging to the Academic Branch of the Kerala State Institute for Languages to 58. The age of retirement on superannuation of the other employees was fixed as 55. The prayer in these Original Petitions is for a direction to the respondent to raise the retirement age of the petitioners to 58 as in the case of the academic staff. According to the petitioner, the administrative staff and the academic staff of the institute have to be treated alike in the matter of their conditions of service. Treating the two sets of staff differently is discriminatory and violative of their fundamental rights guaranteed under Art.14 and 16 of the Constitution of India. There is further case for the petitioners that the question of enhancement of the age of retirement of the staff has to be decided by the governing body of the Language Institute and not by the Government. The Governing body has not taken a decision in this matter. Thus, it can be seen that the whole case of the petitioner rests on the plea of discrimination among members of the staff of the respondent Institute.

(2.) A counter affidavit has been filed by the respondent. The plea of discrimination has been answered in the counter affidavit as follows:

(3.) Yet another decision of the Supreme Court cited by the learned counsel for the respondent is LIC. of India v. S. S. Srivastava ( AIR 1987 SC 1527 ). In the above decision, the Supreme Court was considering the discrimination regarding the age of retirement between the employees belonging to Class I and Class II on the one hand and Class II and Class IV on the other hand. The Supreme Court in the above decision held as follows: