High Court said that the employee cannot seek continuous benefits of higher salary which has been credited to him mistakenly by the employer and the already credited benefits cannot be recovered also.
The Division Bench headed by Justice Sanjeev Kumar recorded these observations in a plea filed by the daily wagers of Jal Shakti Department seeking quashing of an order and judgment passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), whereby the Tribunal has disposed off a batch of pleas filed by the petitioner-daily wagers with a direction to the respondent-authorities to re-fix the pay structure of the petitioner-employees by denying the higher pay scale to them.
The Tribunal has, however, directed the respondents not to recover any amount already paid to them with a further direction to re-refund to them the amount, if any, already recovered, either from their salary or pension/gratuity.
These petitioners were earlier engaged as Daily Wagers in the PHE/I&FC (now Jal Shakti) Department, came to be regularized as Class-IV employees and were initially placed in the pay scale of Rs 750-940. Some of the similarly situated Class-IV employees of the Department, filed a writ petition before court seeking the benefit of Circular No. PHEJ-20094-20113 dated 18.03.1993, as modified by order No. PHEJ/3417-36 dated 11.06.1993 and the same was disposed off by the Court vide order dated 23.12.2015, directing the respondent-authorities to accord consideration to the claim of the petitioners.
In compliance with the order passed by the court, respondents issued a circular dated 18.03.1993, whereby the petitioners, along with other similarly situated persons, were placed in the higher pay scale of Rs.950-1500. The circular dated 18.03.1993 was later partially modified vide office circular dated 11.06.1993, in terms whereof it came to be provided that all those employees, who had notionally completed three years of service in the lower grade and have physically worked against the post for at least one year would be eligible for promotion to the next higher grade.
This is how all the petitioners came to be placed in the higher pay scale of Rs.950-1500 notionally w.e.f 01.04.1998 and monetarily w.e.f 01.07.2015. The petitioners continued to avail the benefit of the higher pay scale till the impugned order dated 08.07.2021 was issued by the respondent-department, initiating recoveries from the salary/pension of the petitioners w.e.f August, 2021 resulting into present litigation by and between these employees and the department.
High Court has held the decision of CAT without any fault and upheld the same. “In the instant case, as we have pointed out earlier, the petitioners never disputed that the benefit which was given to them was under a mistake of fact and was, therefore, capable of being corrected by the respondents. The entire emphasis of the petitioners in the plea was to prevent the respondents from recovering the benefits already availed of”, the bench concluded.
The court said the Tribunal accepted their plea and granted the relief aforesaid. However, the claim of the petitioners to avail the benefit of a mistake of fact despite the mistake having been detected and corrected is totally misconceived and, therefore, rightly not accepted by the Tribunal.
The DB further added that although the contention of the petitioners was right to the extent that the excess amount could not be recovered as there was no fraud on their part in getting higher pay scale, the respondents cannot be prevented from re-fixing the salary after the amount erroneously transferred was withdrawn by the beneficiary employees.
The court noted it was never disputed by the petitioners that the benefits were given due to a mistake of fact and were also capable of correction by the employee. It added that the petitioners never claimed entitlement under SRO 59 (by which higher pay was granted) or challenged its withdrawal.
With these facts and keeping in view of the circumstances of the case the High Court thus upheld the Tribunal’s judgment allowing the Government to re-fix pay, but barred recovery of past payments already disbursed to the petitioners. The court said that Public employers can correct mistakes, but must do so without causing undue hardship.
Source – https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/employee-cant-seek-higher-pay-scale-given-erroneously-by-employer-hc/