Chandigarh, February 22
More than seven years after the Punjab Government came out with a notification providing fixed monthly emoluments to its employees during the probation period without grade pay, annual increment or other allowance, a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed the same.
The Bench of Justice MS Ramachandra Rao and Justice Sukhvinder Kaur directed the state and other respondents to grant regular pay scale to the petitioners, along with all other emoluments, allowances etc. from the date of their initial appointment. A three-month deadline was set for paying the arrears.
In its 36-page order, the Bench directed the state and other respondents to count the period spent on probation as regular services for the determining the total length of service under the service rules. The Bench also quashed conditions included in the appointment letters issued to the petitioners on the basis of the notifications.
The impugned notification dated December 25, 2015, was applicable to all employees – expect members of the Punjab Civil Service (Judicial Branch), specialist doctors and “permanent employees having lien in permanent post and appointed substantively to another post on a time scale of pay”. It had also made it clear that period spent on probation was not to be treated as time spent on the post.
The Bench also made it clear that a previous notification dated January 15, 2015, had already been quashed in the cases of Gurwinder Singh and others and Dr Vishavdeep Singh and others. The ratio or the reason behind the two decisions, in its opinion, equally applied to the matter “since what was contained in the notification January 15, 2015, was introduced in a different form in the notification dated December 22, 2015”. The Bench added there was no material change, except that specialist doctors were added to those granted exemption.
“All the writ petitions are allowed and the notification dated December 22, 2015, is also quashed and the benefit thereof shall accrue to the petitioners, who have challenged it from their date of initial appointment as was done in the case of Gurwinder Singh and others,” the Bench added.
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