An inadvertent pay-scale error cannot confer retrospective entitlement to an inapplicable IDA scale.

The applicant, a retired Department of Telecommunications employee, sought implementation of an order granting him placement in the BCR Grade IV scale with effect from 2 July 1993.

In an administrative order dated 8 April 2014, the respondents stated the scale as Rs. 8,570–245–12,245, an IDA scale. They later issued a corrigendum substituting the CDA scale of Rs. 2,000–60–2,300–EB–75–3,200, which they said applied in 1993.

The applicant challenged the corrigendum, contending that he was entitled to the scale stated in the earlier order.

His entitlement to BCR placement arose from an earlier OA allowed by the Tribunal, whose outcome was upheld on challenge by the respondents.

1. Whether the applicant was entitled to the IDA pay scale or the CDA pay scale with effect from 2 July 1993.

2. Whether the respondents could correct the IDA scale stated in the 8 April 2014 administrative order by corrigendum.

No statute, regulation, or judicial precedent is identified as the basis of the decision.

The Tribunal applied the principle that an inadvertent or clerical error in an administrative order does not create a substantive entitlement contrary to the governing pay structure or the circumstances prevailing at the relevant time.

It also proceeded on the factual distinction that the applicant remained under the CDA pay pattern until BSNL’s formation on 1 October 2000, when IDA pay scales came into existence.

The Tribunal found that the applicant’s placement in the BCR grade from 2 July 1993 implemented the relief granted in the earlier OA, but that the applicable scale for that period was the CDA scale.

The IDA scale had been inserted in the 2014 order by mistake; because IDA scales were introduced only upon BSNL’s formation in 2000, the mistaken reference could not confer an entitlement to that scale retrospectively from 1993.

The Tribunal therefore considered the correction to the CDA scale justified.

It dismissed the OA with no order as to costs.