New Delhi, Nov 19: In a significant judgement, the Supreme Court has interpreted the "equal pay for equal work" doctrine and held that employees performing similar job but possessing different educational qualification could be treated differently. This ruling was given by a bench comprising Chief Justice V N Khare, Justice S B Sinha and Justice A R Lakshmanan while deciding in favour of the West Bengal government which had challenged a Calcutta High Court verdict in favour of Tarun Kumar Roy and others employed in the irrigation department.
Referring to Article 14 of the Constitution envisaging the doctrine of “equal pay for equal pay”, the bench said said that the doctrine did not contemplate that only because of the nature of work was same, it would be automatically applied irrespective of the employees' source of recruitment or other relevant considerations.
The holders of higher educational qualification could be treated as a separate class, Justice Sinha, writing the judgement for the bench, said and added "such classification, it is trite, is reasonable". "Employees performing the similar job but having different educational qualification, can, thus be treated differently," the bench said. Bureau Report