HC directives in contempt regarding rectification in pay fixation of SEs

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Oct 10: In a major relief to the engineers of the State, the High court has in the Contempt Petition ordered the State Government to rectify the pay fixation of Superintending Engineers since 1992.
Justice M K Hanjura, while passing the judgment for rectification of pay-scales observed that the issue raised in the petition has since been decided in the same court in SWP No. 529/92 on 7.4.1996. The court has given the Government six weeks to issue orders in this regard and place it before the court on the date of the next hearing.
The contempt petition had been filed alleging non compliance of the order dated 17.05.2001 passed by HC in SWP No. 1608/1992.
While passing the judgment, Justice Hanjura observed, “the interveners cannot be discriminated invidiously. They have to be treated on the same pedestal and have to be accorded the same treatment as has been bestowed unto the petitioners in SWP No.529 / 1992 in the matter of the grant of the pay scales”.
“The case started on its odyssey in the year 1992 and winded its tortuous course by now for almost 25 years.  In this journey, some of the interveners have entered in the eighth or ninth decades of their life tottering, or, rather doddering their way to register their claim in the court and the pith and core of the judgment of the Division Bench is that the case of the interveners cannot be treated as a sui generis case.  They have to be equated together and treated on par with the other similarly situated Superintending Engineers in the matter of the application of the SRO 75 of 1992 dated 30.03.1992 regulating the salary of this class of officers”, High Court said.
“They constitute a unique and a peculiar class of their own.  The SRO will apply to the entire cadre of Superintending Engineers that includes the interveners as well who are similarly circumstanced with this class of officers and to whom alone the benefit of the SRO has been accorded”, High Court said.

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