D.S.Sinha, J. - (1.) BY means of this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India the petitioners, who are doctors in the employment of the U.P. Electricity Board, the respondent No. 1, have approached this Court for issuance of a writ of mandamus, order or direction in the nature of mandamus, commanding the respondents to grant them parity with engineers, employed by the respondent No. 1, in respect of statute and scale of pay. Sri S.P. Singh, learned counsel for the petitioners, contends that the respondent No. 1 is State and bound by the provisions of Articles 14, 16 and 30A of the Constitution and cannot discriminate doctors against engineers : that the doctors are entitled to the same emoluments as are being paid to the engineers on the will known principle of equal pay for equal work and that in not doing so the respondent No. 1 is practising discrimination and resorting to unfair labour practice. In support of his contentions the learned counsel placed reliance on the decisions rendered in Union of India v. Kashikar, : 1986 F.L.R. (308) S.C., P Savita v. Union of India and others, : A.I.R. 1985 S.C. 1124 B.Chandrashekhar v. State of Karnataka and others, 1980 A.I.S.L.J. at p. 22 and Om Prakash v. Union of India,, 1974 A.I.S.L.J. Note 57.
(2.) SRI S.P. Singh, who appears for the respondents, submits that the claim of the petitioners has no substance in as much as there is no similarity of any kind between them and the engineers which is condition precedent for applicability of the rule of equal protection envisaged by the Constitution . According to the learned counsel, the petitioning doctors and the engineers belong to separate wings of services of the respondent No. 1, namely, medical wing and engineering wing. The parity claimed by the petitioners, therefore, misconceived. There is nothing on record to show that the petitioners and the Engineers belong to either same service or same integrated cadre as a matter of fact the doctors and engineers constitute two distinctly separate and well defined classes. The nature of services rendered by thorn is different. Their cadre and grades are different. The doctrine of equality cannot be said to have been violated if the alleged disparity or preferential treatment or discrimination of any other description is made between the persons belonging to, apparently, different classes, categories, groups or wings.
(3.) THE petitioner doctors and the engineers, employed by the respondent No. 1, are not equal by any stretch of imagination. They are rather unequals. The rule of equality cannot be applied amongst unequals. If unequal are treated at par it would by itself be violative of the Constitutional guarantee of right to equality contemplated by Articles 14 and 16.;