Jail warders are entitled to the one-month additional salary benefit retrospectively from 27 August 2015.

The petitioner association sought, among other reliefs, an additional honorarium equivalent to one month’s salary for jail warders.

The State had provided such an honorarium to specified non-gazetted police personnel under a policy dated 27 August 2015. Jail personnel were later covered by a prison-department letter dated 28 January 2019.

By I.A. No. 2 of 2024, the association sought amendment of its prayer to claim the benefit from 27 August 2015 rather than from 2019.

The State’s counsel sought an adjournment because the relevant file was unavailable.

Whether the petitioner could amend its prayer to seek the additional honorarium from 27 August 2015.

Whether jail warders, whose benefit was extended by the prison-department letter dated 28 January 2019, were entitled to the additional honorarium retrospectively from 27 August 2015.

The Court applied the reasoning in Satya Narayan Ram v. State of Bihar, C.W.J.C. No. 1773 of 2021, which treated the later inclusion of vigilance personnel as correction of a technical omission and directed that the benefit operate from the date of the original policy.

The Division Bench, in State of Bihar v. Satya Narayan Ram, L.P.A. No. 485 of 2022, affirmed that result and dismissed the State’s appeal.

The appellate judgment’s reproduced discussion also referred to the principles of equality and “equal pay for equal work,” including the qualification that parity depends on comparable duties, responsibilities and volume of work.

The Court noted that the original policy was adopted in 2015 and that the benefit was extended to jail personnel only in 2019.

It considered the earlier vigilance-department litigation, where a later extension of the same benefit had been given effect from the original policy date, and applied the same reasoning to the warders’ claim.

The Court therefore concluded that the 2019 date of extension did not preclude retrospective relief from 27 August 2015.

It held that the additional one-month honorarium granted to jail personnel from 28 January 2019 should instead be granted from 27 August 2015, and allowed the writ petition.