CAT steps in to rescue AIIMS employees on pay scale

The Central Administrative Tribunal has held that an employee of  an autonomous organisation like AIIMS is entitled to similar pay and allowances akin to Central government servants.

"Applicants cannot be discriminated against despite being in autonomous organisation, where the government rules and instructions and the decision in pay and allowances would
mutatis mutandis (the necessary changes) extend to him," the
Tribunal, comprising Members Ramesh C Panda and Shanker Raju, said.

The CAT passed the order on a plea of Sudesh Kumar and others, working as private secretaries and personal assistants in AIIMS, seeking parity in terms of pay scale with Central government employees.

Referring to its earlier order, the CAT said a discriminatory and contradictory stand is antithesis to the fairness in law and that the parity has always been maintained between the applicants and their counterparts in Central Secretariat Stenographers Service (CSSS), and the governing body of AIIMS has also approved the proposal.

Non-extension of the same, when all the functional requirements are identical, is violative of the principal of "equal pay for equal work", which has assumed a fundamental  right, the Tribunal said.

Earlier, the Finance Committee recommended parity in grade pay scale between employees of CSSS and AIIMS but the finance ministry had conveyed to AIIMS that it was not possible.

Ministry of health and family welfare had also rejected the proposal of the Finance Committee following which the applicants approached the Tribunal.