The Supreme Court has said that the directions issued by the Central Government are not binding on the state universities. These are recommendatory in nature. On the basis of these, registrars of state universities cannot claim higher pay scales. Giving this decision, a bench of Justice SK Kaul set aside the order of the Uttarakhand High Court, in which the writ petitioner Sudhir Budakoti was ordered to pay the salary equal to that of the Registrar of the Central University. The bench said in the judgment that the law in this regard (Kalyani Mathivanan vs KV Jayaraj, 2015) is settled that the state governments are not bound by the directions of the central government. These may be binding to a large extent on central universities, which take funds from the central government, but they cannot be binding on state institutions.
According to the case, on December 31, 2008, the HRD Ministry had issued two letters. In this, it was asked to revise the pay scale of the lecturer and registrar of the university. The Uttarakhand government accepted the recommendation of a higher pay scale for the teaching faculty, but left the registrar. The petitioner was appointed to the post of Registrar and paid salary as per the 2006 Rules. After being posted as Assistant Registrar in Kumaun University, he filed a writ petition in the High Court and demanded equal pay as the Registrars of the Central University. Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand government fixed his salary as per the Sixth Pay Commission on April, 2011, the petitioner challenged it and the High Court accepted the petition as unconstitutional.
the decision was policy
The Uttarakhand government had come to the Supreme Court against this order. The state government said that the decision to revise the lecturer’s salary and not to revise the registrar’s salary, was a policy and there could be no judicial review of this decision of the government. The State Government is not bound to pay the same salary as that of the Central Government University and at the time of appointment they were given the same pay scale of the State.