RAJAN ROY,J. - (1.) Heard Mr. Anand Mani Tripathi, Mr. A. P. Singh, Mr. Rakesh Srivastava, Mr. Saurabh Lavania, Mr. Pradeep Chandra, Mr. Vinod Kumar Shukla, Mohd. Ali, Mr. Amit Dwivedi, Mr. Arun Kumar Shukla, Mr. Alok Sharma, Mr. Shishir Chandra, Mr. M.M. Asthana, learned counsel for the petitioners and Mr. H.P. Srivastava, learned Additional Chief Standing Counsel for the respondents.
(2.) This is a bunch of writ petitions filed by regular employees working in the Public Works Department etc. of the Government of U.P., inter alia, challenging the viries of Rule 3 (8) of the U.P. Retirement Benefits Rules, 1961 (For short 'the Rules, 1961') and Regulation 370 of the Civil Service Regulations, as also, claiming the benefit of services rendered by them in work-charged establishment, for the purposes of calculating qualifying service for pensionary benefits and also for grant of service benefits such as promotional pay-scale, as the case may be.
(3.) All these writ petitions involve common questions of fact and law, therefore, they have been heard together and are being decided by a common judgment. For convenience Writ Petition No. 20486(M/B) of 2016 and Writ Petition No. 7837(M/B) of 2015 have been treated as leading writ petitions.;