Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court recently upheld an order granting assistant professors in medical colleges their rightful pay scales, as stipulated under the Punjab Medical Education (Group-A) Service Rules of 2016. The court dismissed an appeal by the state government and criticized its arbitrary actions that led the doctors to seek legal redress.
The Division bench, consisting of Justices Anupinder Singh Grewal and Lapita Banerji, emphasized that doctors deserve both respect and their lawful pay, highlighting the state’s “capricious and irrational” actions. “The arbitrary and unreasonable action of the state has compelled the doctors to knock the portals of this court. The doctors ought to be treated with respect and dignity and given their lawful dues under the rules,” the bench observed.
The issue arose when doctors appointed under the 2016 rules were denied the pay scales they were entitled to, which ranged from Rs 37,400 to 67,000 with a grade pay of Rs 8,600. Instead, the state issued executive instructions to apply a lower central pay scale. The doctors challenged this in court, arguing that the executive instructions could not override the statutory provisions of the 2016 rules.
The single-judge bench had already deemed the state’s actions arbitrary and directed compliance with the prescribed pay scales. The Division bench upheld this decision, dismissing the state’s appeal as lacking merit. The bench reiterated that statutory rules must take precedence over conflicting advertisements or executive instructions.
The court further stated that if the state wished to offer lower pay scales, it needed to amend the statutory rules. “Executive instructions would have the force of law only in the absence of statutory rules or to fill the gaps in the statutory rules, which is not there in the case at hand,” the bench concluded.
