A pay rule conferring unbridled discretion is read down after a pick-and-choose grade pay award

A Division Bench of Justices Vivek Singh Thakur and Ranjan Sharma quashed a 2016 notification for fifty-eight Health Educators and ordered a higher grade pay from October 2012.

Fifty-eight Health Educators in the Himachal Pradesh Health Department, who were promoted but ended up on the same grade pay as the feeder post they had been promoted from, have won a judgment that goes further than their own pay slips. A Division Bench of Justice Vivek Singh Thakur and Justice Ranjan Sharma quashed the notification of 30 January 2016 so far as it fixed their grade pay at Rs 4,200, read down two rules of the Himachal Pradesh Civil Services (Category/Post-wise Revised Pay) Rules, 2012 for conferring unfettered and uncanalised discretion that was abused by a pick-and-choose criterion, and held that the resulting discrimination offends Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. The judgment, authored by Justice Ranjan Sharma, is marked approved for reporting.

Ten years in two forums

The petitioners first went to the State Administrative Tribunal in Original Application No. 4590 of 2016. On the abolition of the Tribunal the matter was transferred to the High Court as CWPOA No. 8076 of 2019. It was reserved on 16 June 2026 and announced on 8 October 2026. Mr. K. S. Banyal, senior advocate, with Mr. Uday Singh Banyal appeared for the petitioners; Mr. Ramakant Sharma, Additional Advocate General, for the State.

What they asked for was narrow: that the notification of 30 January 2016 be set aside and the respondents directed to revise their grade pay to Rs 5,000 with effect from 1 January 2006, with consequential benefits. They also asked for the record of other categories in the Health Department to be summoned, and for costs, on the footing that the litigation was the result of the State's own omissions.

Their complaint of injustice was comparative. They had been given the lowest grade pay even though they were more qualified, more experienced and carried more job responsibility than other categories — and the authorities, they said, knew the scale, the qualifications, the inter-se hierarchy and the duties of each category when they fixed it.

The same grade pay for the promotion and the feeder post

The central anomaly is simple enough to state. The Health Educators hold a promotional post. The incumbents of the feeder post — the post from which they are promoted — were given grade pay of Rs 4,200. So were the Health Educators. A promotion that carries no difference in grade pay is, in substance, not a promotion at all.

The second anomaly is one of dates. The benefit in question had been granted and released to the feeder post incumbents, to other categories in the Health Department and to many other employees with effect from 1 October 2012. The petitioners' re-revised pay structure was released only prospectively, from 1 February 2016.

Rules 1(ii) and 9, read down

The reasoning reaches past the notification to the rules under which it was issued. Rule 1(ii) and Rule 9 of the Himachal Pradesh Civil Services (Category/Post-wise Revised Pay) Rules, 2012 were held to confer unfettered, unbridled and uncanalised discretion, and the Bench found that discretion had been abused by adopting a pick-and-choose criterion while granting the re-revised pay structure. The result was hostile discrimination and arbitrariness, offending Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Both rules were read down on that basis. Rule 8 was held inapplicable on these facts.

A separate finding goes to how the decision was taken at all. The nomenclature of Health Educators was changed from “promotion to placement” without amending the statutory rules of 1999, and the Bench held that was done while ignoring germane factors and the preconditions spelt out in an Expert Committee Report of 20 October 2015. That vitiated the entire process, and the resulting decision embodied in the 2016 notification was declared inoperative for all purposes.

Protecting the petitioners while the State re-does the exercise

Quashing a pay notification creates an obvious risk for the very people who challenged it: until a fresh one issues, what do they draw? The Bench addressed that expressly, to carve out a balance between the petitioners' rights and the interests of the State authorities and to protect them against a reduction in pay structure and grade pay.

As an interim arrangement, the Health Educators are to continue drawing pay in the re-revised structure of Rs 10,300-34,800 with grade pay of Rs 4,200 and accruals, until the modified or revised benefits are notified.

Order

The petition was allowed in these terms. The notification of 30 January 2016 was quashed to the extent it gave grade pay of Rs 4,200, and the action of releasing the re-revised pay structure prospectively from 1 February 2016 was also quashed. The State authorities must revisit the petitioners' case and give an appropriate proportional higher grade pay, over and above Rs 4,200, with effect from 1 October 2012. Giving the same grade pay to the Health Educators as promotional post holders and to the feeder post holders was quashed and set aside.

On money, the judgment splits the notional from the actual. The higher grade pay is to be granted from the due date of 1 October 2012 notionally, with the benefit of pay fixation in the modified structure, but actual monetary benefits accrue only for the three years preceding the filing of the writ petition on 15 September 2016 — that is, with effect from 15 September 2013 — and thereafter, with all consequential benefits.

The State authorities are to comply and release all benefits within four weeks. Until the revised benefits are released, the interim arrangement continues. Parties bear their own costs, and pending miscellaneous applications stand disposed of.