CHIEF GENERAL MANAGER, BHARAT SANCHAR NIGAM LIMITED AND ORS Vs. CENTRAL ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNAL AND ORS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and its officers have approached this Court challenging order dated 23.8.2010 (P-3), passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Chandigarh Bench, Chandigarh (for brevity, 'the Tribunal'), granting benefit to the original applicant-Respondent No. 2 to step up his pay with reference to the higher pay of his junior Shri Dinesh Gupta-Respondent No. 3 and pay him all the consequential benefit.

(2.) It has remained undisputed that on regularisation as Junior Telecom Officer (JTO) in Punjab Circle the pay of the original applicant-Respondent No. 2 was fixed in the pay scale of 6500-200-10500 w.e.f. 1.1.1996 and he was further promoted from the post of JTO to Sub Divisional Engineer (SDE) on 20.10.2004 in the IDA pay scale of 11875-300-17275. He approached the Tribunal with the grievance that although he was regularly appointed as JTO in 1994 and his pay was fixed as such with effect from 1.1.1996 and thereafter he was regularised as SDE from 2005, yet from the month of October 2005 person junior to him i.e. Respondent No. 3, who was recruited in 1992, was drawing salary of 13,075/-whereas the original applicant-Respondent No. 2 despite being senior was drawing only 12,775/-, which is less than 300/- than that of Respondent No. 3. He sought removal of anomaly by stepping up his pay at par with his junior.

(3.) The claim made by the original applicant-Respondent No. 2 has been found meritorious and the Tribunal has placed reliance on the judgment of Hon'ble the Supreme Court in the case of Gurcharan Singh Grewal v. Punjab State Electricity Board, 2009 3 SCC 94, wherein it has been held that senior officer in the same cadre cannot be paid less than his junior even if anomaly in the pay of the senior is due to difference of incremental benefits. Accordingly, directions were issued by their Lordships' of Hon'ble the Supreme Court in Gurcharan Singh Grewal's case (supra) to step up the pay of such an officer with reference to the higher pay of the junior officer. The operative part of para 7 of the order passed by the Tribunal reads thus: