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Judgment
Udai Pratap Singh, J.—This writ appiication is for appropriate direction commanding upon the respondents to give the members of the petitioner the same scale of Rs. 850-1360 as is given to all Graduate Assistants working in different departments of the State of Bihar pu-rsuant to the recommendation of the 4th Pay Reviston Committee. The petitioner is an Association of the Non-Gazetted ministerial staff of the Patna High Court Ranchi Bench. They are appoin-ted by a Board constituted by the Hon''ble the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court by in-viting applications. The applicants are to appear in a written tast and after qualifying at the written test a panel is prepared who are to appear for interview before the Interview Board constituted by the Hon''ble the Chief Justice as Chairman and two of the Hon''ble Jud-ges of the Patna High Court as member and are selected for appointment. The minimum qualification for employment in the establish-ment of the Patna High Court is graduation. The nature of duties of a ministerial staff is to ass�st the Courts in the administration of justice. Keeping in view the special nature of work of the Assistants in the establishment of the Patna High Court, the pay scale of the staff of the High Court had all along been higher than that of the ministerial staff of the State Government. In other establishments of the State of Bihar, namely, Urban Development, Housing Department, Town Planning Organisation, Welfare, Directorate of Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, the Assistants were given the pay scale of Rs. 335 to Rs. 555, Rs. 296-423 and Rs. 296-460 respectively prior to 1.4.1931, whereas, the members of the petitioner were given the pay scale of Rs. 348-570.
The State Govtrnment constituted the 4th Pay Revision Committee. The said Committee while considering the necessity of revising the pay scale formulated guidelines to execute the recommendations and prepare report there of. They are as under :-
(i) For fixing minimum pay scale the Constitution provide Article 43 for the State Government employess and ali the rules and policy of the State Government should be in the guideline of Article 43 of the Constitution;
(ii) To bring uniformity between the lower and higher pay scales by reduction of gap;
(iji) It was not necessary that pay scale of the employees of the State Government should be pr�pared according to prevalent pay scale in their sector;
(iv) Equal pay for equal work should be the principie for all appointment of the State Government and that shall be possible only when Peon, clerk and Assistants etc, which are working in different departments are- brought to one class and they shall be made entitled to one pay scale;
(v) All employment be done on merits, in special class of employment and should be higher than the general categ�ries so as to feed the Stat� department with efficient and memorious staff and in that case only best among the lot can come forward for the appoimment;
(vi) To bring uniformity into different pay scales and remove the d�sparity;
(vii) Increment in the pay scale should be such that it will not in any way affect the development work of the State;
(viii) The incumbent who are getting higher pay scale should not be denied the benefit of the revision of pay scale. It may be that their benefit of increment is lesser in percentage than the persons of the lower pay scale;
(ix) Due importance should also be given while fixing the pay scale and revising it depending on the nature of work and responsibility of the respective ser-vices;
It is urged on behalf of the petitioner that minimum qualification for assistants in other departments of the State of Bihar is intermediate and 75% of the total appointment is done by Subordinate Service Examination Board or Bihar Public Service Commission. The 4th Pay Revision Cemmittee, without con-sidering the importance of the duties and responsibility of the members of the petitioner who were Assistants in the Establishment of the High Court and whose minimum qualification for appointment is graduate and who have also been appointed on the basis of written test and interview held by a duly constituted Board. recommended for the revision of pay scale from Rs. 348-570 to the pay scale of Rs. 730-1080 presumably on the basis of the recommendation of the revised pay scale for Assistants in the Secretariat who were also getting pay scale of Rs. 348-570 before the submission df the report. li is stated that the case of the members of the petitioner was the case of the Assistants having minimum quali-fication of graduate whereas the Assistants in the Secretariat had the minimum qualification of Intermediate. The report has recommended the case of the members of the petitioner treating unequals to equals ignoring the minimum bar of qualification in the employment. The nature of -duties of the staff being if not superior cannot be different than the nature of work and duties of the Stastical Assistants in the Urban Development, graduate Assistants in the Town Planning, walfare Inspectors in the department of Welfare and Kanungo in the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Department and are of same in nature with that of the members of the petitioner and the aforesaid Assistants discharge the same duties as that of the members of petitioner and there is no rea-son whatsoever to discriminate against the members of the patitioner and other graduate assistants merely because the other assistants belong to different departments of the State of Bihar. Thc report having accepted the Graduate Assistants as a separate class and treating them as separate class has denied the benefit of revision of pay scale to the members of the Petitioner who by their nature of duties and responsibility are also graduate Assistants. Thus, it is stated that the State Government has acted arbitrarily in denying the members of the petitioner equality before law and equal protection of law as enshrined ia Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of �ndia.
In Octobet, 1983, the petitioner throu-gh its General Secretary made representation to the Chief Minister of Bihar asserting denial of justice and the anomalies in the pay scale. The said representation was s�bmitted to the Pay Anomaiies Removal Committee. A remin-der was sem to resolve the dispute and remove the grievances of the petitioner. Members of the petitioner also made representation to the Hon''ble Chief Justice of Patna High Court and the same was forwarded by the Registrar to the Joint Secretary of the Government of Bihar, Finance Department that the anamoly may be removed retrospectively. The Additional Finance Commissioner by resolution of the State Government dated 19.5.1984 revised the pay scale of the Assistants in the Secretariat and the j�nior engineers to Rs. 755-121O/-whereas in the Resolution dated 31.12-I981 the State Government had accepted to revise the pay scale of the assistants in the Secret-ariat to Rs. 730-1080. It is submitted that the lVth Pay Revision Committee having accepted at �hapter VII para 24 that in revision of pay scales the primary consideration should be edu-cational qualification and the anamol�es in the fixation of pay should be removed with refe-rence to the said minimum qualification requ-ired for the post, the IVth pay Revision Committee has omitted to consider the case of the petitioner''s members along with other similarly qualified graduate assistants. The action of the State Government, therefore, has been challenged on the ground of arbitrariness in treating unequal to be the equals while consi-dering the case of the assistants working in the Secretariat whose minimum qualification for appointment is Intermedite with that of the petitioner whose minimum qualification for appointment is graduate. The IVth Pay Revision Committee having accepted at para 103 of Chapter VII that while reducing pay scale due consideration should be given to the duties and responsibilities of the post, lhe State Government acted arbitrarily in not taking into consideration the nature of the work of the members of the petitioners. In 1981, the IVth Pay Revision Committee report recommended the corresponding pay scale of Rs. 348-730 when other assistants who were getting less pay scale, i.e. Rs. 260-296 and 335 have been given a corresponding revised pay scale of Rs. 850/- which is higher than the members of the petitioner.
Thus lhe demand of the members of the petitioner is that they should be given same pay scale of Rs. 850-1360/- which have been given to all graduate assistants working in different defartments of the State of Bihar pursuant to the recommendalion of IVth Pay Revision Committee.
It appe�rs from the report of the pay Anamoly Removal Committee at page 316 that the Committee did not after thoroughly going through the report of the IVth Pay Revision Committee, find any discussion of the pay scale recommended for the High Court assistants. The statement in the counter affidavit filed on behalf of respondent no. 2, Commissioner, in the Department of Finance, Bihar, is inconsistent with the above finding of Pay Anamolies Removal Committee, wherein it is stated that the Government have sanctioned the revised scale of pay to the Assistants of the High Court as per the recommendat�on of the IVth Pay Revision Committee.
Counsel for the petitioner has drawn my attention to a comparative chart showing the old and the new scale of pay recommended by the Pay Revision Committee for different departments in the State. This is Annexure-1 to writ application. Few instances have been referred to show obvious discrimination. Frora the said chart, it would appear that various posts which were carrying small pay scale of Rs. 296-460 and Rs. 335-555/-have been recommended higher pay scale of Rs. 850-1360/-. The Assistants of the High Court �n the erstwhile pay scale at Rs. 348-570/- have been turned into pay scale of Rs. 730-1080/ -. Rcference was made to Chapter 67.11 and onwards in order to show that individual cases of each department was considered whereas Cbapte�67.31 does not show any such individual consideration of pay scale of the assistants like members of the petitioner. It does not appear from Chapter 67.31 of the Pay Revision Committee Report as to what was the consi-deration for this recommendation of Rs.730-1080. According to G.P.I., appearing for the State, status and responsibility of all the gra-duates similarly appointed in each branches of the department may not be similar, That may be so but it does not appear what were the fac-tors and criteria adopted either by the lVth Pay Revision Committee or Pay Anomaly Committee. It is difficult to venture as to why and on what basis these authorities fixed up the scale of Rs. 730-1080 for the assistants of the High Court, why were they isolated and their individual case not discussed and considered. Refere-nce may be made to the case of Randhir Singh T. Union of India and others (A.I.R. 1982 Supr-eme Court, 879) wherein Their Lordships of the Supreme Court held :-
Construing Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of �ndia, in the light of Pre-amble and Article 39 (d), it is clear that the principie "Equal pay for Equal work" is deducible from those Articles and may be properly applied to cases of unequal scales of pay based on no classification or irrati-onal classification though those drawing the different scales of pay do identical work undcr the same employer.
It is true that equation of post and equation of pay are matters primarily for the Ex-ecutive Government and expert bodies like the pay Commission and not for Courts but wbere ali things are equal that is, where ali relevant coasiderations are the same, pers-ons holding identical posts may not be tre-ated differentrally in the matter of their pay merely because they belong to different departments. Of course, if officcrs of the same rank perform dissimilar functions and thopowcrs, duties and responsibilities of the posts held by them vary, such officers may not be b�ard to complain of dissimilar pay merely because the posts are of the same rank and the nomeclature is the same.
In the present case, it does not: appear what, consideration prevailed with the authorities and of course, it does not appear from the report either of the pay Anamoly Removal Committee or the lVth Pay Revision Committee that they considered the case or the member of the petitioner with those others holding similar status in different department of the State Government. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court while considering the case of the State of Mysore and another Vs P. Nara-singha Rao (A.I.R. 1968 Supreme Court 349) held that "higher educational qualifications are a relevant consideration for fixing a higher pay scale and, therefore, matriculate tracers could be given a higherpay scale than non-matriculate tracer though their duties were identical. Logi-cally, if person recruited to a coinmon cadre can be classified for purposes of pay on the basis of their educational qualifications, therc could be no impediment in classifying them on the same basis for purpose of promotion." It is well settled principie that in a court of equity, wrongful acts are no passport to favour. There is obvious discrimination and arbitrariness in treating tho members of the petitioner differently than other graduate Assistants in other departments of the State Government. These members of the petitioner are entitled to the same scale of pay of Rs. 850-1360,''-which have been given to other graduates in other departments of the State Government. Their case has not been considered. Therefore, in view ofthe aforesaid discussion, the Chief Secretary of the State of Bihar (Respondent no, 1) and the Commissioner of Finance (Res-pondent no.2) are directed to consider the case of the members of the petitioner as early as poasible and preferably within three months from the date of the receipt of the communi-cation of this order. The writ petition is, acco-rdingly allowed with the directions indicated above but in the circumstances of this case there will be no order as to costs.