Patna: Providing relief to around 1,500 officers of Bihar Judicial Service, Patna high court has set aside a govt notification that discriminated between them and state employees for annual increment.
Allowing a writ petition on Wednesday, a division bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Partha Sarathy observed, “When a benefit has been granted to all the government employees by the state government, there is no reason for the State to modify it with respect to the judicial officers; discriminating them from the other government employees and also prejudicing their entitlement to increment, as is provided to all other government employees.”
Before July 28, 2023, both the state govt employees and judicial officers used to get annual increment either on January 1 or July 1, following their promotion/appointment/financial upgrade.But the state govt issued a notification on July 28 last year, saying the judicial officers would get increment from the date of their promotion/appointment/financial upgrade.
Following this, Ajit Kumar Singh, the secretary of the Bihar Judicial Service Association (BJSA), submitted a letter to the state’s finance department, seeking parity with the govt employees who get increment on either of the two specific dates in a year. Singh later filed a writ petition in the high court, in his personal capacity, and on behalf of the BJSA.
Allowing Singh’ petition, the court said that the judicial officers will also be entitled to get increment on the specific dates as applicable to the other govt employees.
“Increments shall be continued in so far as the judicial officers are concerned as per the procedure in vogue in the State of Bihar,” the court said.
Anuradha Singh, standing counsel 21, appearing for the state govt, told the court that the modification was carried out in accordance with the recommendation of Second National Judicial Pay Commission (SNJPC).
Advocate Saket Tiwary, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that judicial officers were also entitled to the annual increment on either of the two dates at par with the govt employees.
Merely a recommendation in the SNJPC that the increments normally would be once a year as per the date of appointment or promotion or financial upgrade cannot result in denial of the benefit conferred by the state on all govt employees to the judicial officers, Tiwary said.

We also published the following articles recently