Regularised employees cannot be denied the applicable cadre pay scale solely due to their mode of appointment.

The petitioner was initially engaged by the respondent on 18 March 1986 as a Nominal Muster Roll employee and was regularised through an appointment letter dated 17 August 1992 with effect from 2 April 1992.

The appointment letter described him as a “Senior Crane Operator,” but he was paid in the lower pay scale of Rs. 1205-34-1545-38-1811.

The petitioner claimed the scale applicable to a Senior Crane Operator, or at least the scale applicable to a Crane Operator under the respondent’s circular dated 21 December 1993, namely Rs. 1370-41-1790-45-2015-15.

He raised an industrial dispute, which was rejected by the Labour Court on the ground that there was no evidence of his promotion from Crane Operator to Senior Crane Operator and that he could not claim parity with employees promoted earlier.

The petitioner challenged the award under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution.

Whether the petitioner, whose regularisation appointment letter described him as a Senior Crane Operator, was entitled to the pay scale applicable to that promotional post in the absence of evidence of an actual promotion.

Whether the respondent could pay the petitioner a lower scale than that prescribed for a Crane Operator merely because he entered service through regularisation rather than direct recruitment.

Whether the Labour Court’s award denying the petitioner relief was liable to be set aside.

The High Court exercised jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution to review the impugned Labour Court award.

It applied the principle that entitlement to a promotional post and its pay scale ordinarily requires proof of promotion in accordance with the applicable service structure or recruitment rules; a designation mistakenly stated in an appointment letter does not, by itself, confer a promotional post where the employee was not subjected to the promotion process.

The Court relied on Kamlakar v. Union of India , MANU/SC/0374/1999, for the principle that once employees belong to the same cadre and perform the same duties, the distinction between direct recruits and regularised/promoted employees cannot justify unequal pay within that cadre.

The respondent relied on Union of India v. Narendra Singh , Civil Appeal No. 5865 of 2007, but the Court’s operative reasoning turned on the distinction between entitlement to a promotional post and parity of pay within the Crane Operator cadre.

The Court held that Senior Crane Operator was a promotional post in the respondent’s service structure, with Crane Operator as the feeder post.

Since the petitioner had initially been employed on a nominal muster roll and had thereafter been regularised, and since there was no evidence that he had undergone the promotion process or was actually promoted, the reference to “Senior Crane Operator” in the appointment letter was treated as an inadvertent error and did not confer entitlement to the Senior Crane Operator scale.

However, the respondent’s alternative position—that different pay scales could be paid to Crane Operators solely on the basis of their mode of entry—was rejected.

The petitioner had functioned as a Crane Operator, and employees holding the same post and cadre and performing the same duties could not be subjected to unequal pay merely because some were directly recruited while others were regularised.

Applying Kamlakar , the Court therefore held that the petitioner was entitled to the prescribed Crane Operator scale, though not the Senior Crane Operator scale.

The Court held that the petitioner was not entitled to the pay scale of a Senior Crane Operator because there was no evidence of his promotion to that post.

Nevertheless, he was entitled to the Crane Operator pay scale of Rs. 1370-41-1790-45-2015-15 under the circular dated 21 December 1993, and not the lower scale of Rs. 1205-34-1545-38-1811.

The impugned Labour Court award dated 27 October 2005 was set aside, with consequential relief in those terms.