NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has restored a lawsuit filed by Indian-origin employees of the Italian embassy, who say they faced salary discrimination.
A division bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Renu Bhatnagar set aside a May 2019 order of a single-judge bench, which had dismissed the suit for having “no cause of action”. The employees had argued that the pay disparity violated an Italian Presidential Decree issued in 2000, and said the bench had “misconstrued and misapplied” the law while rejecting their plaint.
In its December 3 order, the bench said, “The court finds that the single judge has erred in rejecting the plaint on the basis of nonexistence of a cause of action.” It was agreed that the plea did disclose a cause of action and should be allowed to proceed.
The judges stressed that they were not commenting on the final merits of the case. “Any assessment of the merits of the cause of action or applicability of defences (limitation, jurisdiction, etc.) will have to await fuller consideration on the record,” the order said.
The court noted that both the Indian-origin staff and their Italian-origin comparators were locally recruited and had lived in India for at least two years before being hired. This formed a “cogent” basis for treating them as a homogeneous category, it said.
“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. However, the case of the appellants was misconstrued, and the facts were wrongly presumed to their detriment,” the court observed.
It added that the question of whether the workers formed a homogeneous group entitled to equal pay was a complex factual issue, involving factors such as residency, job classification and cost of living. The court has reinstated the plaint, clearing the way for the suit to go to trial on its merits.