CAT Order: 80 Income Tax Officials demanding Grade Pay 4800 & 5400

O R D E R

The 80 applicants of this OA are working as Administrative Officers (Grade-III & Grade-II) and Private Secretaries/Senior Private Secretaries in the gazetted Group-B cadres of the Income Tax Department. They are before this Tribunal, being aggrieved by the respondents not have extended the benefit of the Grade Pay of Rs.4800/- in Pay Band-2 to them, and not granting to them the Grade Pay of Rs. 5400/- after completion of 4 years of substantive service, as has been allowed to the Income Tax Officers (ITOs, in short), and also to the Section Officers, and the Private Secretaries in the Central Secretariat Service (CSS, in short)/Central Secretariat Stenographer Service (CSSS, in short). Their plea is that the VIth Central Pay Commission (VIth CPC, in short) had recommended parity in pay and allowances of the personnel in the field and secretariat offices, which general recommendation has not been accepted in their case. They are also aggrieved that Senior Tax Assistants, and the Office Superintendents and Stenographers Grade I, who all form the feeder grades for the posts of Administrative Officers and Private Secretaries respectively, have also been placed in the same pay band and Grade Pay of Rs.4200/- in PB-2, thereby creating an anomaly.

2. The applicants are aggrieved that when a proposal regarding removal of this disparity in the pay scales in respect of Administrative Officers and Private Secretaries was sent to the Department of Expenditure by the Directorate of Income Tax (Human Resource Development), the proposal was not agreed, to leading to the issuance of the impugned Annexure A-1 dated 28.02.2011. They are also aggrieved because the applicants erstwhile pay scale of Rs.6500-10500, which they were drawing equal to the Grade-II ITOs, as per the recommendation of the IVth and Vth CPC, has not been upgraded on par with that of Income Tax Officers, which was revised w.e.f. 21.04.2004 from Rs.6500-10500 to Rs.7500-12000, leading to a disparity, which was not addressed even by the VIth CPC. It was submitted that the request of the applicants is fully justified, as the posts of Administrative Officers and Private Secretaries carry higher responsibilities, and they are attached to senior officers up to the rank of Additional Secretary, Govt. of India, while the Administrative Officers even function as DDOs, and are delegated with certain administrative and financial powers.

44. Therefore, it is held that the respondent – Union of India have correctly decided to follow the recommendations of the VIth CPC, as contained in Para-3.1.14, and applied that specific recommendation in the case of the applicants, and the applicants cannot claim any relief merely on the basis of a claim of a past historical parity, even though in some cases some such parity may have been granted to them by the Courts and this Tribunal in the past from time to time, in view of the prayers made in those cases, and the circumstances prevailing at that point of time.

45. In the result, since it has been held by the Honble Apex Court that a claim for parity of the pay scales to be sustained not only as the nomenclature of the posts has to be compared, but the duties, functions, powers, responsibilities and various criteria like promotional avenues, availability of speeded promotion in the offices other than the Secretariat etc., have to be considered, it is obvious that the applicants of this OA have not been able to prove their case on any of these counts, as mentioned above, and, therefore, the prayer made in the OA cannot be allowed, and the OA fails accordingly. However, there shall be no orders as to costs.