1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY NAGPUR BENCH : NAGPUR P.I.L. NO. 17 OF 2010 All India Depressed Classes Federation & others .vs. The State of Maharashtra & others Office Notes, Office Memoranda of Coram, appearances, Court's orders Court's or Judge's orders or directions and Registrar's orders. Mr. Z.A. Haq, Advocate for petitioners, Mr. N.W. Sambre, G.P. for respondent nos. 1 & 2. CORAM : S.A. BOBDE & M.N. GILANI, JJ. DATED : SEPTEMBER 28, 2011. 1] By this petition, the petitioner which is an organization formed to espouse the cause of people has questioned the Government Resolution dated 6.2.2006 by which the Government of Maharashtra has decided to extend the benefit of the Career Advancement Scheme to the Lecturers of the Government Polytechnic Institution so that their services are treated as continuous right from the time they were in private employment. In addition, the Government of Maharashtra has decided to grant arrears in difference of revised pay-scale to such employees inclusive of and covering the period for which they were in private employment. 2 2] Mr. Z.A. Haq, learned Advocate for petitioners, submitted that while the Association has no grievance about the grant of continuity of service to such Government employees from the time they were in private employment, the petitioners’ grievance is that the exchequer is being unnecessarily burdened by the grant of difference in arrears of salary extending backwards to the period when the Government employees were in private employment. According to the petitioners, the State cannot disburse any benefits to employees for a period for which they have not rendered any service to the State. 3] Prima facie, it appears that the decision of the Government to extend the benefits is a policy decision taken in the interest of the employees and may not be questionable. 4] The more important contention raised by the learned Government Pleader against the Public Interest Litigation is that this litigation is preferred by an organization which has no concern with the Government employees in question and is a Public Interest Litigation filed for challenging in effect the conditions of service of Government employees. It is not disputed that the petition questions the conditions of service of these employees as affected by the Career Advancement Scheme. In this regard, reference may be made to the judgment of the Supreme Court in 3 Ashok Kumar Pandey .vs. State of West Bengal and others reported in AIR 2004 SC 280 where the Supreme Court observed as follows :- “As stated supra, a time has come to weed out the petitions, which though titled as public interest litigations are in essence something else. It is shocking to note that Courts are flooded with large number of so called public interest litigations where even a minuscule percentage can legitimately be called as public interest litigations. Though the parameters of public interest litigations have been indicated by this Court in large number of cases, yet unmindful of the real intentions and objectives, Courts are entertaining such petitions and wasting valuable judicial time which, as noted above, could be otherwise utilized for disposal of genuine cases. Though in Dr. Duryodhan Sahu v. Jitendra Kumar Mishra and others (AIR 1999 SC 114), this Court held that in service matters PILs should not be entertained, the inflow of so-called PILs involving service matters continues unabated in the Courts and strangely are entertained. The least the High Courts could do is to throw them out on the basis of the said decision. The 4 other interesting aspect is that in the PILs, official documents are being annexed without even indicating as to how the petitioner came to possess them. In one case, it was noticed that an interesting answer was given as to its possession. It was stated that a packet was lying on the road and when out of curiosity the petitioner opened it, he found copies of the official documents. Whenever such frivolous pleas are taken to explain possession, the Court should do well not only to dismiss the petitioners but also to impose exemplary costs. It would be desirable for the Courts to filter out the frivolous petitions and dismiss them with costs as afore-stated so that the message goes in the right direction that petitions filed with oblique motive do not have the approval of the Courts.” 5] Having regard to the circumstances of the present case, we are of the view that this Public Interest Litigation which involves service matters should not be entertained having regard to the observations of the Supreme Court which were reiterated in Dr. B. Singh .vs. Union of India and others reported in 2004 AIR SCW 1494. The petitioners do not have any interest by which their legal rights or liabilities can be said to be affected. The petitioner is not even an organization of Government employees. 5 In this regard, reference may also be made to a judgment of Division Bench of this Court at Goa to which one of us is a party in Writ Petition No. 10/2000 decided on 29 th June, 2004 where this Court rejected a challenge to the notification issued by the Government of Goa by which the Government had removed the requirement of consultation with the Goa Public Service Commission in regard to specified matters of specific class of employees. 6] The petition is, therefore, liable to be rejected. It is accordingly rejected. Judge Judge. J.