Recovery of excess pay from Class III and IV employees is impermissible absent any misrepresentation.

The petitioners were Class IV employees (initially Night Watchmen/Masalchis) promoted to Office Assistants in the District Judiciary of the Nilgiris.

Their employer sanctioned one promotional increment upon this transfer. Subsequently, an internal audit by the High Court determined this increment was inadmissible because Class IV employees move to Class III posts via "transfer of service" rather than promotion, even though pay scales were identical.

Following this, the respondents issued show-cause notices (dated between October and December 2025) seeking to recover the excess payments from the petitioners’ salaries.

The petitioners challenged these notices via writ petitions under Article 226.

1. Whether a writ petition is maintainable against a show-cause notice regarding recovery of excess pay.

2. Whether the recovery of excess payments from Class IV employees, made due to an error in pay fixation by the employer without misrepresentation by the employee, is legally permissible.

The Court applied the principle that recovery of public money is generally permissible to rectify errors in pay fixation.

The Court relied heavily on the equitable principles established by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in State of Punjab v. Rafiq Masih (2015) 4 SCC 334, which mandates that recoveries are impermissible in specific situations of extreme hardship, notably: (i) from employees belonging to Class III and Class IV service; (ii) from retired employees or those due to retire within one year; and (iii) when excess payment was made for over five years before the recovery order.

The Court observed that while a writ typically does not lie against a show-cause notice, an exception exists if the notice is issued without jurisdiction or violates established legal protections.

The Court noted that the petitioners did not misrepresent facts to gain the increment; rather, it was a clerical/administrative error in pay fixation by the Establishment.

Applying the Rafiq Masih criteria, the Court reasoned that since the petitioners are Class IV employees, recovering excess salary after a significant lapse of time would cause "extreme hardship" and be "iniquitous".

While the Court affirmed the respondents' right to re-fix the pay to the correct current scale moving forward, it determined that the retrospective recovery of previously paid sums was arbitrary and outweighed the employer’s right to recover.

The Court ordered that any amount already recovered pursuant to the impugned notices must be refunded to the petitioners within twelve weeks; recovery proceedings were set aside, though prospective re-fixation of pay was allowed.