London: Gurkha soldiers serving in the British Army faced systematic and institutionalised discrimination and were subjected to less favourable pay and conditions than other members of Britain's armed forces, Queen's counsel Cherie Booth claimed.

In a test case that could cost her husband's government up to 2 billion Pounds, Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, while representing seven soldiers from Nepal seeking compensation from the government, on February 18 accused the Ministry of Defence of "irrational and discriminatory" treatment over their pay and conditions which she said amounted to a continuing breach of their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

"It is part of a culture in the British Army in which, on the one hand, the Gurkhas are acknowledged to have been loyal fighters to the British Army for 200 years and, on the other hand, are treated as different and inferior," she told Justice Sullivan in the High Court.

Gurkhas have been recruited since 1815 and some are on duty in Kuwait. More than 50,000 died in the Second World War, the Falklands and other conflicts. Booth said Gurkha pay and conditions were set at the level of Indian troops in 1947 when Britain, India and Nepal agreed to recognise them as an "integral part" of the British Army.

Although 28,000 Nepalese citizens apply for just 230 annual places in the Gurkhas, the discrepancy between their terms of employment and the pay and conditions of their British colleagues has been a growing source of resentment.

PTI