Senior employees are entitled to stepping up of pay to match higher salaries drawn by juniors.

The petitioner was appointed as a Forest Ranger on 30.12.1961

In the seniority list of Forest Rangers, he was placed at Serial No. 90, while his juniors, Sh. Rupa Ram and Sh. Bardas Kashyap, were at Serial Nos. 206 and 224, respectively

The juniors (belonging to the SC category) were promoted to the Himachal Pradesh Forest Service (HPFS) cadre as Assistant Conservators of Forests (ACF) on an ad-hoc basis on 07.07.1979, whereas the petitioner was promoted to the same post on an ad-hoc basis on 23.01.1982

All three were regularized in the HPFS cadre w.e.f. 22.12.1983, at which point the petitioner regained seniority over his juniors based on the "catch-up" principle

However, because the juniors had served longer in the HPFS cadre (counting from their ad-hoc promotion), they were granted the senior pay scale (Rs. 12000-16350) w.e.f. 01.01.1996 upon completing 16 years of service

The petitioner was granted the same scale only on 23.01.1998, resulting in him drawing less pay than his juniors from 1996 until his retirement on 31.03.1999

The petitioner sought a "step-up" of pay, which was rejected by the respondents on 16.03.2012

1. Whether a senior officer is entitled to a step-up of pay to match the higher salary drawn by his juniors who were promoted earlier on an ad-hoc or reserved category basis.

2. Whether the "catch-up" principle of seniority necessitates pay parity under Fundamental Rule 22.

The Court applied the "catch-up" principle as enunciated in Ajit Singh and others (II) v. State of Punjab and others (1999) 7 SCC 209, which allows a general category senior to regain seniority over a reserved category junior upon promotion to the same grade

It further relied on the settled legal principle that a senior cannot be paid a lesser salary than his junior, as established in Gurcharan Singh Grewal v. Punjab State Electricity Board (2009) 3 SCC 94 and Union of India v. C.R. Madhava Murthy (2022) 6 SCC 183

The Court also invoked Fundamental Rule (FR) 22-C (now FR 22(I)(a)(1)), which provides for the removal of anomalies by stepping up the pay of a senior officer to equal that of a junior officer in the same cadre

The Court reasoned that since the petitioner was senior to the two employees in the feeder category (Forest Ranger) and subsequently regained his seniority in the promotional HPFS cadre upon regularization on 22.12.1983, he could not be deprived of pay parity

The Court rejected the State's contention that the juniors were entitled to higher pay because they completed 16 years of service earlier due to their ad-hoc promotions

It held that once the petitioner regained seniority under the "catch-up" rule, any anomaly where the senior draws less pay than the junior must be rectified under FR 22

Citing Gurcharan Singh Grewal, the Court emphasized that even if disparity arises from incremental benefits or different dates of scale application, it is a settled principle of law that a senior cannot draw less than a junior

Consequently, the rejection of the petitioner’s representation was found to be arbitrary

The Court held that the petitioner is entitled to a step-up of pay at par with his juniors from the date the disparity arose

The respondents were directed to calculate the pay-scale on a notional basis from the date the juniors were granted the higher scale, with actual arrears payable for three years prior to the filing of the petition

Furthermore, if arrears are not released within three months, they shall carry an interest rate of 6% per annum