MANBA BIKHA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a case in which a permanent employee working as a cartman in the Railway was denied the prescribed pay scale, on what may be called a "super technical ground", and the plaintiff has met with failure in his attempt to get justice at the doors of both the Courts below.

(2.) The plaintiff was appointed as a cartmen in the year 1937 in the Engineering department in the old Bhavnagar State Railway. That railway merged into the Saurashtra State Railway in the year 1948, which, in its turn underwent Federal Financial integration of April 1, 1950 and thereafter, on Nov. 4, 1951, it merged with the Western Railway. The plaintiff was originally paid Rs. 60/- per month on his appointment as a cartman, his duty being to tranship railway material from one place to another as directed by the supervisory staff in his own cart, which he had to maintain along with two bullocks for transhipment of railway goods. His salary was increased to Rs. 150/- per month, and it was shown at Rs. 5/- per day. He was enjoying all the privileges of leave, railway passes and other rights which other railway employees enjoyed. The cadre of pay scales in force in which the plaintiff was working was sanctioned into a prescribed scale of Rs. 30-35, and it is the plaintiff's case that it was for the railway administration to fix his pay in the scale and put him in the cadre as he was a permanent railway employee. This scale was subsequently increased into a scale of Rs. 70-85 with effect from July 1, 1959. Though the plaintiff had exercised the option of being absorbed in the new pay scale on the regular cadre, the railway adminis- tration failed to do so, and it was the plaintiff's case that he was entitled to pay scales from April 1, 1950, on the basis that he was brought on the regular cadre in the pay scales of Rs. 30-35 later raised to Rs. 70-85. (x x x)

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