A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma said their state has the power to adopt "positive discrimination" between a censured employee along with a colleague with a clean record.
The apex court passed the ruling while upholding an appeal filed by Rajasthan [ Images ] government challenging their state High Court's direction to grant "selection grade" (increase within salary) benefits to certain employees despite having been censured with regard to misconduct.
"The person who has an untainted, unblemished, clean and unpolluted record in service would be treated on a higher pedestal than anyone who has either tainted, blemished, unclean or polluted record.
"This obviously seems to be a reasonable classification and is under the ambit and touchstone of Article 14 from the Constitution. There is neither any ambiguity nor any doubt within the same, " said Justice Verma, writing the judgement.
In this instance, the state had issued an office memo on The month of january 25, 1992, providing for selection grade to employees upon completion of 9, 18 or 27 years of support.
A subsequent clarification was issued through "Clause 7" upon July 24, 1995, that the grant of selection grade will be deferred by a year to those had a "censure" within the Annual Confidential Records.
The High Court had, however, held that the selection grade cannot be deferred or witheld due to "censure".
Aggrieved, the state had appealed in the pinnacle court.
Source : Rediff