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
