New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has reopened a 12-year-old case concerning the alleged lack of pay parity among the employees of the Italian Embassy in New Delhi.
The case dates back to 2013, when the embassy employees filed a case alleging that the embassy was paying Indian and Italian staff differently for essentially doing the same kind of work.
The work contracts of Indian employees were governed by the Italian Presidential Decree, particularly Article 157, which requires equal pay in a homogeneous or same category. Despite identical duties and local residency status, the Indian employees submitted, they were paid less and accorded lesser benefits than their Italian counterparts.
On Wednesday, a bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Renu Bhatnagar set aside a 2019 order passed by a single-judge bench, which had summarily dismissed the plea without giving the employees an opportunity to provide evidence and have their case judged on merits.
Apart from seeking parity in pay and benefits, the group of Indian staff had sought an amount of about Rs 2.11 crore in arrears from their employer.
“It felt unfair that despite us doing the same work, we have been paid differently. The salary difference is not just marginal, it is in multiples,” Vikram Dhindaw, who had served as an executive at the Italian Embassy, told ThePrint.
Essentially, the petitioners claimed that the pay disparity violated the Italian Presidential Decree, which under Article 157 expressly incorporated provisions for equal remuneration among employees belonging to the same homogeneous category.
Some of the Indian employees were locally recruited as far back as 1997.
From the initial years of employment, the employees observed and experienced a pronounced disparity in salary and service benefits as compared to their Italian colleagues for substantially similar roles. Despite fulfilling identical eligibility requirements, including continuous residency in India, the Indian employees received significantly lower pay and fewer ancillary benefits, the court noted.
In a span of 11 years, between 2001-2012, the employees took multiple steps to highlight and resolve the alleged discrimination meted out to them. They did this through multiple representations to the Italian Embassy, correspondence with authorities in Rome, and engagement with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
During this decade or so, the Italian government made assurances that the disparity would be rectified, but the pay gap and differential benefits persisted unabated across subsequent contract renewals and new appointments, the court noted.
On 1 May, 2019, the HC dismissed a case filed by the embassy employees under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure on the sole ground that the suit did not contain any cause of action as pleaded.
Simply put, this provision allows a court to summarily reject a plea in its initial stages, if it fails to meet certain legal requirements. The main objective is to dismiss frivolous suits at the beginning without a complete trial. For instance, under this provision, a plea can be dismissed on grounds of no cause of action or even something as technical as not paying up the court fees.
Back then, the HC had said that pay parity which was being claimed was not mandated, and that the cost of living justified differential treatment. On its part, the embassy had claimed sovereign immunity.
On Wednesday, however, the two-judge bench found that the petitioners and their Italian colleagues were locally recruited and had resided in India for at least two years prior to employment, so it could be said that the foundation for classifying them as a “homogeneous category” was a cogent one.
It also said that questions like whether the cost-of-living justifies differential wages are complex in nature and require a thorough examination at trial, after taking into consideration the evidence.
“This gives out prima facie reasons to venture into pay parity as a legal entitlement under the Presidential Decree. The appellants should have been allowed to prove their assertions but, however, the case of the appellants were misconstrued, and the facts were wrongly presumed to their detriment,” the court noted.
The single-judge, it said, had mistakenly dismissed the case on grounds of the “nonexistence of cause of action.” On its face, the bench noted, the plea does disclose a cause of action and must, therefore, be allowed to proceed.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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