Court slaps fine on state, AP HCs

Petitioners’ plea on moving to AP upheld

In a rare incident, a division bench of the Telangana High Court has imposed costs on the Telangana High Court and the AP High Court over the matter of bifurcation of court employees.

The division bench comprising Justices M.S. Ramachandra Rao and T. Amarnath Goud was dealing with a petition filed by retired employees of the then combined High Court at Hyderabad who retired prior to November 1, 2018. They said this denied them an opportunity to choose where they would like to work from — Telangana state or Andhra Pradesh.

Anticipating the division of the High Courts, the combined High Court had issued a circular in November 2018 asking employees to choose where they would like to work.

The petitioners who retired before issuance of the circular, the petitioners in the case, said that they would have had an opportunity to work till the age of 60, which is superannuation age for employees of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh at Amaravati, if they were given the opportunity to opt between the two states. They contended that the ‘Appointed Day’ (June 2, 2014) should be considered for giving options, not January 1 2019, the day the separate High Courts were constituted for the two states.

As their representations were rejected by both High Courts, the petitioners approached the Telangana High Court by way of filing the writ petition.

Giving relief to the petitioners, the bench of Justices Ramachandra Rao and Amarnath Goud said that this exclusion without any valid reason was violative of Article 14 of the Constitution and also denied them fair and equitable treatment.

The court directed that the petitioners shall be notionally deemed to have rendered service in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh from January 1, 2019, till they attained the age of 60 years. The notional service shall be taken into account for the purpose of calculation of their pensionary benefits.

Both High Courts have to pay the salary and other benefits with interest at 6 per cent to the petitioners in a 1:1 ratio. Imposing the costs on the Telangana and AP High Courts, the bench directed each of them to pay `3,000 to each of the petitioners within four weeks.