The Delhi High Court ruled that a plaint, which on its face does disclose a cause of action, must be allowed to proceed. The factual dispute whether the locally recruited employees of Indian origin, who were engaged by the Embassy of Italy in New Delhi, indeed form a homogeneous group entitled to equal pay is material and complex, involving interpretation of relevant law and factual nuances like residency, job classification, and cost of living. Such issues cannot be summarily decided under Order VII Rule 11 of the CPC but require thorough examination at trial upon evidence.
The Court therefore overturned the opinion of the Single Judge, who had wrongly proceeded to reject the plaint on the hypothesis that the claimed discrimination does not fall within the protective umbrella of Article 157, and thus, “there is no cause of action”.
A plaint can be rejected only if, even assuming all averments in the plaint to be true, it fails on its face to show a right to sue. A plea that a plaint “does not disclose” a cause of action is very different from the court concluding that, on the facts pleaded, no cause of action in fact existed. The former is a jurisdictional defect in pleading; the latter is a merits question not triable at the threshold, cautioned the Court.
The Division Bench comprising Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Renu Bhatnagar observed that given the appellants and their Italian-origin comparators were locally recruited and had resided in India for at least two years before employment, the factual foundation for classifying them as a homogeneous category is cogent.
The Bench therefore found prima facie reasons to venture into pay parity as a legal entitlement under the Presidential Decree, and the appellants should have been allowed to prove their assertions; however, the case of the appellants was misconstrued, and the facts were wrongly presumed to their detriment.
Briefly, the appellants, comprising locally recruited employees of Indian origin, were engaged by the Embassy of Italy in New Delhi from as early as 1997, with their appointments and contracts governed by the Presidential Decree. From the initial years of employment, the appellants experience a pronounced disparity in salary and service benefits as compared to their Italian-origin colleagues recruited locally for substantially similar roles. Despite fulfilling identical eligibility requirements, including continuous residency in India, the Indian-origin employees received significantly lower pay and fewer ancillary benefits.
Even though the Italian Government assured that the disparity would be rectified, the pay gap and differential benefits persisted unabated across subsequent contract renewals and new appointments. Due to persistent inaction by the respondents, the appellants resorted to the consent mandated under Section 86 of the Code of Civil Procedure from the Government of India by January 2013, enabling them to institute civil proceedings against the foreign state, and filed a civil suit seeking declarations that the Respondents’ actions contravened Article 157 of the Presidential Decree and constituted employment discrimination, as well as a direction for arrears of approximately Rs.2.11 crore and parity in pay and benefits.
The Embassy, after a prolonged delay, sought rejection of the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 of the CPC, which was rejected by the Single Judge of this Court, on the ground that the facts pleaded did not reveal a justiciable cause of action under the governing Decree, particularly in view of the court’s finding that the “cost of living” justified the differentials. This rejection of the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 of the CPC, thus, terminated the suit at the threshold.
Appearances:
Advocates Abhimanyu Garg, Preety Makkar, Shrutanjaya Bharadwaj, Aashish Dutta, Aman Abbi, and Vivek Sura, for the Appellants
Advocates Jaiveer Shergill and Gaurav Gupta, for the Respondent
