KAMAL CHANDRA SARMA Vs. STATE OF ASSAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Appellants Nos. 1 to 11 were the petitioners in Civil Rule No. 1331/94 presented before this Court seeking a writ of mandamus to the respondents by way of a direction to pay equal salary/ pay for equal work, regard being had to the grounds taken in the petition. Respondent No. 5, the Union of India, was also made a party necessary in the case and respondents Nos. 1 to 4 are all authorities of the State Govt. of Assam. This petition was opposed by the respondents by filing a detailed statement of objection by way of a counter. The learned single Judge after going through the grounds as well as the stand taken by the State of Assam in their counter and after hearing the learned counsel on both the sides, by an order made on 29th January, 1996, held that there was no case made out for issuance of a writ as prayed for. Thus the writ petition came to be dismissed. Hence this appeal.

(2.) At the outset, we may mention that the registry at the time of scrutiny of the papers, should have applied the correct law including the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure to verify as to whether these eleven persons could join together and present one writ petition seeking for reliefs for all the individuals, namely, all the eleven persons, by paying Court fees in one petition. It Is unfortunate that the Scrutiny Officer, while scrutinising the papers, did not apply his mind and failed to record proper objections before the writ petition was registered. However, since the writ Court did not raise objections on the above grounds as preliminary objections, we proceeded to hear and dispose of the appeal on merits. Indeed, if we were to apply the correct law, there must be as many appeals as there are petitioners/ appellants seeking reliefs in this appeal. Again the Registry committed the same mistake which they committed in the writ Court, Again the registry did not apply its mind to verify this factual position and they mechanically posted this matter for hearing. The rules provide that each individual seeking for relief for himself, must present an independent writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking relief individually paying Court fees, However, in the event of a large number of persons seeking reliefs which are common toall of them, no doubt, they may prepare the common grounds and parson one writ petition, but they have got to pay Court fees for as many petitions as there should have been seeking reliefs independently. Similar is the law made applicable in respect of appeals. In other words, apart from not following the procedure as known to law in these matters, the Government has been losing revenue by way of Court fees.

(3.) We will now examine the merits of the matter. The joint case of these petitioners/appellants seeking for the relief of salary or pay scale at par with the Deputy Public Analyst of the Public Health Laboratory, Govt. of Assam, was that they wanted to make out a case before the writ Court that the disparity in the pay scales was pointed out in the Year 1988, bringing notice of the Govt. of Assam to the anomalies found and carried forward in this respect. It was noticed by the writ Court during the course of its consideration that after the 1975 Revision of Pay Rules (ROP Rules in short), the pay scale of Senior Scientific Officer was revised from 550- 1100/- to Rs. 700-1425/-p.m. and that of the Scientific Officer from Rs. 350- 925/- p.m to Rs, 500-1225/- p.m.