Pairokar

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK IS TO APPLY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES By: Parmanand Pandey   ‘Equal pay for equal work’ is the underlying principle of the constitution of India as enshrined in Articles 14 and 39(d). Although our constitution came into force some 66 years ago yet the equality is elusive and the discrimination continues in many fields. In certain areas women are still paid less than their male counterparts. The example of temporary employees is even more glaring because they are paid less than regular employees even in the government sectors, not to say of the private sectors. This inequality is continuing despite catena of decisions of the Supreme Court that there can be no discrimination between two sets similarly placed employees and doing same work regardless of being temporary or permanent.  Recent judgment of the Supreme Court in  ‘State of Punjab vs Jagjit Singh’  has further reinforced this principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’.  The bench of Justice Jagdish Sin

  Adultery law treats women as chattel and lowers their dignity     Parmanand Pandey                   Section 497 of the IPC deals with adultery and it is considered to be a cruelty by the husband on the wife but not the vice versa. Thus, it is not based on gender equality. However, Supreme Court and other High Courts are now crystallising the adultery cases by pronouncing that to have the extra marital cannot termed to cruelty. Let us first see what section 497 says,  "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years or with fine or with both. In such case the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor."         Conscientious people have be

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK IS TO APPLY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES By: Parmanand Pandey   ‘Equal pay for equal work’ is the underlying principle of the constitution of India as enshrined in Articles 14 and 39(d). Although our constitution came into force some 66 years ago yet the equality is elusive and the discrimination continues in many fields. In certain areas women are still paid less than their male counterparts. The example of temporary employees is even more glaring because they are paid less than regular employees even in the government sectors, not to say of the private sectors. This inequality is continuing despite catena of decisions of the Supreme Court that there can be no discrimination between two sets similarly placed employees and doing same work regardless of being temporary or permanent. Recent judgment of the Supreme Court in  ‘State of Punjab vs Jagjit Singh’  has further reinforced this principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’.  The bench of Justice Jagdish Sing

Anybody, who has seen Justice Katju on the Supreme Court bench and has been following his writings in newspapers and blogs after his retirement would hardly have any doubt that he often goes berserk, unreasonable and facetious. The recent example is his offer to Pakistan of giving Kashmir along with Bihar. Very recently he made the most scandalous statement about the IQ and scholarship of all Supreme Court Judges except the two. Therefore, the contempt notice issued against him is well deserved and Justice Gogoi needs to be complemented for this bold decision. It is true that one can severely criticise the judgments and there will be no contempt of the court but once motives are attributed to the judges, it becomes the contempt of the court. And who should know better than Justice Katju? But regrettably, more often than not, he ends up criticising the judges rather than their judgements. I was also present in the Courtroom no.6 yesterday from 2 P.M to 4.15 P.M till the Court rose a

Azamgarh is the Lok Sabha constituency of the Samajwadi Supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. His son Akhilesh Yadav is the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. There are many ministers in the cabinet of Shri Akhilesh Yadav who hail from the district. However, if you go to Azamgarh, you will not find anything that gives you the feel of any VIP constituency. Go to the District Hospital and witness the horrible condition of the patients. There are many class-1 dispensaries in the district with reasonably good buildings sans doctors and other medical equipment. Private doctors are literally rolling in money. People are being fleeced by the private doctors and the owners of the shanty Hospitals day in and day out because there is no choice left for them. The government finds itself thoroughly incapable of having any control over its own hospitals. I was in Azamgarh last week for three days and had to go to the many offices for a small personal work. In normal course, I should not have been ha

Former President of India K.R. Narayanan once famously said ‘Courts in India are like casinos’. Satyamev Jayate (truth prevails), is emblazoned in all courts across the country but justice is often denied to most of the litigants. One cannot say it for certain that he or she would get the justice despite the law and facts in his/her favour.   Illustrious writer Charles Dickens wrote a famous novel ‘Bleak House’, which deals with a well-known fictional case ‘Jarndyce and Jarndyce’. In the case of family dispute two members approach the court which took so much time that by the time the judgment came, both of them not only became old but pauper as well.  More or less the same story is still found in India where the cases linger on, from one court to other, for years nay, decades together. By the time the justice is delivered it loses all relevance for the parties. This trite sentence of ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ is being heard in India for decades. Surprisingly noth

Mondays and Fridays are the miscellaneous days in the Supreme Court of India. Court Rooms get so crowded that it often becomes difficult to reach in the front row when the case is called for hearing. One cannot move in the lobbies without grazing others. Nearly one thousand cases, mainly Special Leave Petitions, are taken up on each Monday and Friday and more than 90% of them are dismissed in limine. Hardly in10% cases notices are issued. One who has been practicing in the Supreme Court will say, without batting even eye lid, that it has literally been converted into to a Court of Appeal. Most of the SLPs are dismissed/admitted in less than two minutes of hearing. Some say that they are not decided but butchered. There is not denying that with the rising number of cases the Supreme Court judges are overburdened. It does not mean that the people should be discouraged from filing the new cases. On the other hand, it is a good sign that people are becoming aware of getting their right

Supreme Court of India has saved the country from major constitutional crisis by modifying its own order of 15 th  May 2015 by which it had directed that the photographs of Minister, Chief Minister or Governor of the states would not be published or shown in the government advertisements. The bench consisting of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice P.C. Ghosh had ruled that it amounted to sheer misuse of public money for private publicity. This order had created a lot of problems for the Federal structure of the country, where the Governors and the Chief Ministers enjoy the equal constitutional rights. Under Part VI of the Constitution of India, the rights of the Governors, Chief Ministers and the State Legislatures are clearly defined from Article 152 to Article 213 as it is provided for the Union Executive from Articles 52 to 122 in Part V. Similarly Articles 124 to 147 of Chapter IV deal with Union Judiciary, while Chapter V from 214 to 237 deal with the State Judiciary.

The dismissal of a petition by the Madras High Court with observation that nowhere in the Indian Penal Code it is stated that ‘eating non-vegetarian food is an offence and there is no law touching, eating habits of any religion is an offence’ is very prosaic interpretation of law but certainly not conducive to the evolution of just, fare and judicious law. The famous legal philosopher Roscoe Pound was of the view that ‘law should be stable but not stand still’. In his famous book ‘An Introduction to Philosophy and Social Control Through Law’, he had said that ‘thinking about law one has to think about the society’.  In a civilised society people must be able to assume that those with whom they deal in the general intercourse of society will act in good faith and hence; (a) will make reasonable expectation which their promises or other conduct reasonably create; (b) will carry out their undertakings according to the expectations which the moral sentiment of the community attaches’