Chandigarh, April 7: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has affirmed that the government cannot extract work from employees on a higher post and subsequently refuse to provide the salary attached to that role. The decision came during the hearing of a petition filed by educational officials who had functioned as District Education Officers (DEOs) without receiving the higher pay grade.
Justice Namit Kumar asserted that once it is established that an employee has worked against a higher post, the respondents are under a legal obligation to grant the consequential benefits. “Denial of such emoluments, despite extraction of higher responsibilities, would be arbitrary and contrary to the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’,” the Court maintained. The ruling clarifies that even temporary or stop-gap arrangements entitle the worker to the pay and allowances of the position they occupied.
The State’s counsel had argued that the petitioners were merely “temporarily deputed” to manage local administration and were therefore not entitled to the higher pay scale. However, the Court declared that the nature of the work performed dictates the compensation. The Bench noted that the petitioners were assigned these roles via official orders, making the state’s refusal to pay the standard DEO allowance legally untenable.
The Court’s direction is a significant move against the practice of assigning greater workloads without formal financial adjustments. The Bench affirmed that the adjudicatory focus remains on the actual duties discharged rather than the formal title held at the time. The government is now required to fulfill the financial arrears for the period of service as DEOs, ensuring that legitimate service benefits are not bypassed through administrative technicalities.
