Justice C Hari Shankar, Justice Om Prakash Shukla, Delhi High Court
CAT Ordered Salary For A Post That Employee Never Held Or Worked In: Delhi High Court Holds "Equal Pay" Flawed Absent Functional Parity
|The Bench set aside an order granting employee demanding pay for supervisory work equivalent to Deputy Director, noting that the doctrine of equal pay requires formal appointment or strict proof of identical duties.
The Delhi High Court has set aside a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order directing that an employee be paid the emoluments of a higher post on which she was never appointed and never worked for a single day. Terming the case "truly peculiar", the Court held that the doctrine of "equal pay for equal work" cannot be invoked to claim the regular pay scale of a higher hierarchical post without a valid appointment order or unequivocal proof of functional parity.
The Court clarified that a claim for equal pay requires strict proof of absolute identity in functions, responsibilities, and reliability. It observed that the mere absence of intermediate supervisors or highly favorable remarks in Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) does not establish that a temporary employee independently discharged the duties of a higher cadre post.
A Division Bench comprising Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Om Prakash Shukla observed, at the outset, “This is a truly peculiar case. The Central Administrative Tribunal has directed the respondent to be paid the pay and emoluments of a post on which she was never appointed, and on which she did not work even for a single day”.
“The principle of equal pay for equal work cannot be pressed into service to direct the person, who is substantively appointed to a particular post, in a particular pay scale, to be granted the scale of a higher post. The very application of the principle of the “equal pay for equal work” is, therefore, fundamentally flawed”, the Bench further said.
Dr. Monika Arora, CGSC appeared for the petitioners and respondent appeared-in-person.
The dispute arose when Dr. Tejinder Kaur was appointed as a temporary Research Assistant (RA) at the National Institute of Public Cooperation & Child Development (NIPCCD) in September 1990. She moved through subsequent projects, and was eventually promoted as an Assistant Director on an ad-hoc basis in 2011, and was later directly recruited as a Joint Director.
However, Kaur moved a petition asserting that since 1990, she had been independently executing supervisory functions identical to that of a Deputy Director (DD), a higher Group 'A' cadre post. She sought retrospective regularisation, designation, and the pay scale attached to the post of DD from her initial date of appointment as an RA.
The matter was initially instituted as a writ petition before the Delhi High Court in 1993 and was subsequently transferred to the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).
During the prolonged litigation, the Supreme Court in a related civil appeal ordered an ad-hoc payment of ₹20 lakhs to Kaur, making it expressly subject to the final outcome of the pending writ proceedings.
The CAT eventually allowed her application in January 2014, accepting her contentions that her Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) were reviewed directly by Joint Directors, thereby indicating she performed independent supervisory work equivalent to a DD. The Union of India and NIPCCD challenged this directive before the High Court.
Evaluating the merits, the High Court observed that the Tribunal's findings lacked any concrete evidentiary foundation. The Bench emphasized that the job descriptions of an RA and a Specialist/DD were structurally distinct; an RA was fundamentally meant to assist, while a DD was a unit head responsible for administration and planning.
“…The Supreme Court has, in various decisions, laid down the factors which have to be borne in mind while granting parity of pay on the ground of equal pay for equal work. The Tribunal, with respect, appears to have proceeded on the basis of a fundamental misconception of the principle. The principle of equal pay for equal work applies where the pay of a particular post is directed to be equated to the pay of another post, on the ground that the two posts, when compared, satisfy all the ingredients which justify equation of their pay scales”, it said.
The Court found that general official notations indicating that Kaur was an outstanding worker or that she handled specific project components did not mean she was functioning as a DD. It noted that the burden to prove exact functional similarity lies heavily on the employee, and the Tribunal erred by granting a Group 'A' post's salary to a Group 'D' appointee without an appointment order or an established vacancy.
“In so directing, the Tribunal has held that the NIPCCD extracted, from the respondent, during her tenure as RA, ‘supervisory work equivalent to that of DD’, without a single shred of material to justify the finding”, the Bench noted.
Consequently, the High Court set aside the Tribunal’s judgment, holding it unsustainable on facts and law. As the operative direction, the Court quashed the order and directed Kaur to refund the ₹20 lakhs disbursed to her under the Supreme Court's interim order. Acknowledging the financial impact, the Court permitted her to repay the sum in ten bi-monthly instalments of ₹2 lakhs each, commencing from July 31, 2026.
Cause Title: National Institute of Public Co-operation & Child Development and Anr v. Tejinder Kaur (Neutral Citation: 2026:DHC:5210-DB)
Appearances:
Petitioners: Dr. Monika Arora, CGSC with Subhradeep Saha, Anamika Thakur, and = Abhinav Verma, Advocates.
Respondent: Respondent in person.