New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot discriminate between two sets of employees as being "important" and "unimportant" for the purpose of promotions, as it would be violative of their fundamental right.

"An employee is an employee. How the employees would be structured is undoubtedly within the realm of the statutory authority but by reason thereof, it cannot tinker with their essential fundamental right," a bench of Justices S B Sinha and G S Singhvi said.

The apex court passed the ruling by dismissing an appeal filed by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) challenging a direction of the Calcutta High Court for evolving a "Assured Career Promotion" scheme for employees working in the corporation's engineering wing.

The grudge of the engineers was that they were stagnated in their posts for the past 30 years without promotions even though their colleagues in other departments had got regular time-bound promotions.

Though the FCI took the stand before the High Court that certain schemes were being evolved for assured promotions of the engineers, it changed its stand in the apex court which irked the latter.

Source : PTI