Civil Writ Petition No. 11190 of 2001 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No. 11190 of 2001 Date of decision: 30.07.2010 Usha Rani ...Petitioner versus State of Haryana and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgement? 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Present: Mr. B.S. Sodhi, Advocate for the petitioner. Mr. Harish Rathee, Sr.DAG, Haryana for the State. ***** RANJIT SINGH J. The petitioner is aggrieved against the action of re-fixing her pay scale by reducing it from Rs. 5750 to Rs. 5600/-. Submission was that this has been done arbitrarily and without affording an opportunity to the petitioner. This writ petition was filed in the year 2001. The writ petition came up for hearing before this Court on 01.08.2001, when notice was issued for 27.11.2001. While issuing notice regarding stay, the recovery was also stayed. Thereafter, the writ petition never came up for hearing before the Court. It is now after 9 years that the Registry has woken up to put up this petition for hearing before this Court. The case is listed under notice to the concerned counsel. The blame in this regard has been placed on the Civil Writ Petition No. 11190 of 2001 2 dealing hand. The written statement has been filed and it is disclosed that the petitioner had herself fixed her pay in the relevant perfoma on 23.05.1996, after having taken an undertaking, which was signed by the then Incharge officer of the field office. Thus, the petitioner is not entitled to the scale which she has granted to herself. This was detected later and the pay was reduced. Even if that was the reason it would have been appropriate to follow the principle of natural justice. The petitioner may not have been able to explain as to what is her entitlement, as per Rule 5 of HCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 1998. It has been pressed into service to say that she had wrongly fixed her pay herself. The writ petition is disposed of with the direction to the respondents to reconsider the case. The petitioner may be served with a show cause notice containing all the grounds on which she is not entitled to pay scale which she allowed herself and thereafter pass fresh order after affording an opportunity of hearing to the petitioner. The writ petition is, accordingly, disposed of. July 30, 2010 ( RANJIT SINGH ) rts JUDGE