C PANNIRSELVAM Vs. HINDUSTAN TELEPRINTERS LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) APPELLANTS were employed as Technical Assistants in the respondents factory. Respondent engaged in the manufacture of teleprinters and other things. After the petitioners entered service. they acquired degree in Engineering. At the time of their initial employment they had only Diploma in Engineering. They were promoted as Assistant Engineers with effect from 1.4.1986. The scale of pay for that post at the time was Rs.900-50-1450.

(2.) IN a writ petition filed in the year 1989, three years after they were so promoted, they contended that they should have been promoted not as Assistant Engineers. But as Engineers, and, they should have been given a scale of pay of Rs.1100-60-1940. It is their case that several years prior to their promotion, other employees, who had also served as Technical Assistants, and who had acquired degree in Engineering after they had entered service had been promoted as Engineers, and given that scale of pay. They complained of infringement of their right under Art.14 of the Constitution.

(3.) THE immediate provocation for filing the writ petition appears to be the recruitment, which the employer had initiated for the post of Engineers in the year 1988. THE recruitment was to be made from among the fresh graduates from Engineering College besides others who had also the liberty to apply for the post. We have been informed that one of the petitioners had in fact applied and was also selected as an Engineer. THE employer certainly had a right to make recruitment for the post of Engineers from among such category of persons who were considered by the employer as competent to discharge the duties attached to the office.