- (1.) The issue in the present appeal is narrowed down to whether the appellants are entitled to be promoted as Assistant Personnel Officers w.e.f. 1-1-1986 and whether on that account they are entitled to the arrears of salary in the promotional post from the said date.
(2.) At the relevant time, in the Personnel and Administration Division of the respondent-Corporation there existed the following relevant hierarchy of posts: I. Asstt. Grade I/ Senior Steno II. Office Superintendent/ Personnel Assistant (Supervisory) III. Asstt. Personnel Officer/Private Secretary (Supervisory) IV. Jr. Executive (Officer)/ Senior Supervisory (P.). It appears that on 9th August, 1984 there was a strike of the employees and on 29th August, 1984, a settlement was entered into between the Union of employees and the management whereby the disputes were referred to one Dr. Binod Kumar for arbitration. Dr. Binod Kumar gave his report in July, 1985 in which one of the recommendations was that the two posts of the Supervisory cadre should be replaced by one such post. Another recommendation was that time-bound promotion should be given after every 7 years to the holders of the abovesaid posts, among others, whether there were promotional posts or not. The time-bound promotees would carry the designation as well as salary of the promotional posts although they would continue to do the work of the post in which they were working, if there were no vacancies in the promotional posts. These recommendations were accepted by the management by their circular/ letter of 14the October, 1985. Pursuant to the acceptance of the said recommendation, the management converted the post of Office Superintendent (Supervisory) into the post of Office Superintendent (Non-supervisory) and thus retained only one Supervisory post, viz., that of Assistant Personnel Officer. However, this affected the concerned employees in two ways. In the first instance, the Supervisory post of Office Superintendents became non-supervisory and secondly, compared to the posts on the same level in other divisions such as Finance and Accounts, the employees in Personnel and Administration Division had to wait for 7 years more to be appointed to the post of Junior Executive (Officer) since the post of Office Superintendent (Non-supervisory) was an additional intermediate post to which they were first to be promoted before they were promoted to Supervisory post of Assistant Personnel Officer from which post alone they could be promoted to the post of Junior Executive (Officer). As far as the other divisions were concerned, there was promotion from the post equivalent to the post of the Assistant Grade-I straight to the Supervisory post. The employees of divisions other than Personnel and Administration Division had not, therefore, to traverse the hurdle of one more non-supervisory post such as that of Office Superintendent (Non-supervisory) in the personnel and Administration Division. Hence aggrieved by the conversion of the post of Office Superintendent (Supervisory) into that of Office Superintendent (Non-supervisory), the appellants approached the High Court. The High Court dismissed their petition and hence an appeal was preferred to this Court. This Court in Nani Gopal Sarkar v. Heavy Engineering Corpn. Ltd., (1990) 3 SCC 173 set aside the decision of High Court and directed the management to promote the appellants therein the post of Junior Executive (Officer) w.e.f. 30th December, 1985 or w.e.f. the date when they or any of them completed 7 years of service in the post of Office Superintendent/ Personnel Assistant. The Court also directed the management to pay them arrears of pay.
(3.) After the aforesaid decision which was given on 21st March 1990, a settlement was arrived at between the management and the Union under Section 12(3) read with Section 18 and other provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 on 13th September, 1990. The settlement, among other things, stated as follows: "The question of implementation of one tier supervisory system in the Corporation under relevant provisions of Dr. Binod Kumar Committee report has been under discussion with the Hatia Project Workers' Union (Recognised). After detailed deliberations on the subject taking into account the pros and cons of the issue and overall interest of the Corporation, the management and the Hatia Project Workers' Union (Recongised) agreed to implement one tier supervisory system in the Corporation as indicated below:- 1. Posts in the scales of pay of .... Office Superintendent (Non-Supervisory) and ... next below the posts in the scale of pay of .... Asstt. Personnel Officer ..... 2. Incumbents of non-supervisory scales of......OS (NS) ..... will be placed as ....... APO ..... with effect from 13th September, 1990. The pay in the scale of pay of ..... APO ...... will be provisionally fixed on the basis of their pay in the pre-revised scale of pay in ....B7.....as on 31-12-1985 notionally brought forward to the date of placement in .... APO .... The fixation of pay will be at the same stage, if available, otherwise at the next higher stage, . . . However, they will not be eligible for any arrears whatsoever on this account." ********** 8. The next promotion of incumbents so placed in the scale of pay of .......APO..... to the post of Jr. Executive will be on completion of seven years of service rendered as.....OS (NS) ...and....APO...taken together." Pursuant to the said settlement, the appellants were appointed as Assistant Personnel Officers on 13th October, 1990. It appears further that in between, on 14th May, 1987, a settlement was entered into between the management and the Union for revision of the pay-scales and under that settlement each of the appellants received arrears of salary of Rs. 1,600/- plus revised pay-scales in the post of Office Superintendent (Non-supervisory) which they were holding.;