SURESH KUMAR TEWARI Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) SURESH Kumar Tewari and forty others are class four employees of respondent no. 2. The U. P. Public Service Commission has engaged on daily wages basis. It is alleged that some of them are working since 1979 and each one of them is working latest from 1986 as given in Annexure 'I' to the writ petition. The posts which the petitioners are holding are that of Mali, Bundle Lifter, Chaukidars Farrash and water-men. Initially they were paid at the rate of Rs. 6/- per working day and subsequently the rate was raised to Rs. 10/- per day and at present it has been raised to Rs. 15/- per day. They do not get any payment on Sundays or Holidays including Second Saturday of each month. It is submitted that the regular pay scales of the same various posts of class four employees are different and substantive pay of none of them is less than Rs. 305/- that the petitioners also discharge a similar kind of duties, obligations and responsibilities as the other regular class four employees. That the Chairman of the Public Service Commission had written a letter dated 24th October, 1

(2.) 86 to the State Government regarding the inequality and justice suffered by the petitioners.

(3.) WE have heard learned counsel for the petitioner as well as State. Prima-facie their appears force in the contention that the petitioners are entitled to the same salary as is paid to the Class IV employees of the respondent no. 2 as they are admittedly doing the same work as performed by Class IV employees of the respondent no. 2. The point stands decided by the decision of the Honourable Supreme Court in the case of "Daily R. C. Labour Post and Telegraph Department v. Union of India" AIR 1987 SC 2342. Their Lordships have held that the State cannot deny to casual labourers atleast the minimum pay in the pay scales of regular employees even though the government may not be compelled to extend all the benefits enjoyed by the regularly recruitted employees. The Supreme Court, therefore, directed the Union of India to pay wages to the workmen who were employed as casual labours at the rate equivalent to the minimum pay in the pay scales of the regularly employed workers in the corresponding cadres but without any increments. In that view of the decision of the Honourable Supreme Court it is not necessary to refer to the other decisions.