The Madhya Pradesh High Court has dismissed an appeal by the state government and affirmed that veterinary assistant surgeons are entitled to time-scale pay benefits on par with medical officers and dental surgeons in human healthcare.
A division bench comprising Justices Anand Pathak and B. P. Sharma ruled that the state cannot discriminate in career pay progression between services performing comparable roles simply because they treat different recipient groups. The judgment upholds an earlier decision by a single-judge bench, which had directed the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairy to grant veterinary doctors the same higher time-scale benefits received by dental practitioners.
Dispute Over Pay Progression Timelines
The legal battle stemmed from a petition filed by veterinary assistant surgeon Vishnu Kumar Gupta and several colleagues seeking parity in time-scale pay, also known as kramonnati. Under a time-scale pay system, an employee starts at a baseline salary that rises through scheduled increments over time until reaching an established maximum.
In their petition, the veterinary doctors pointed out an existing disparity in career advancement milestones. While dental surgeons and medical officers receive time-scale pay progression after completing five, 10, 15, and 30 years of service, veterinary surgeons were made eligible for the benefit only after completing eight years of service.
Challenging the single-judge bench’s ruling, the state government, represented by advocate Manikant Sharma, contended that veterinary assistant surgeons are governed by distinct service rules under the Animal Husbandry and Dairy Department. The state argued that because medical officers and dental surgeons operate under the Madhya Pradesh Public Health and Family Welfare Department with their own set of rules, veterinary officers could not claim parity with them.
Equal Base Scales Preclude Benefit Disparity
The high court rejected the state’s argument, observing that the Madhya Pradesh government already treats veterinary surgeons on par with medical and dental surgeons by granting them equivalent base pay scales and allowances. Because equivalent status has already been recognized at the baseline level, the court held that the government cannot arbitrarily subject veterinary officers to different criteria for higher time-scale progression.
Writing for the bench, the judges emphasized that both human healthcare providers and veterinarians function as healers of society. The court noted that as an employer, the state cannot differentiate between two cadres performing the same essential nature of work, even though one group treats human beings and the other attends to voiceless animals.
Diagnostic Challenges and Rural Impact
Highlighting the demanding nature of veterinary medicine, the court observed that practitioners frequently travel across adverse terrain and through difficult weather to reach remote locations. Unlike human healthcare doctors, who can rely on patients to describe their symptoms, veterinarians must diagnose ailments without verbal assistance, relying entirely on observation, diagnostic skill, patience, and intuition. To illustrate the challenge, the bench cited American humourist Will Rogers, who remarked that the veterinarian is the finest physician precisely because he must know what is wrong without being able to ask the patient.
The bench further underscored the expanding socio-economic footprint of veterinary services, noting that animal husbandry has evolved into a major industry. With veterinary professionals serving more than 80 per cent of the state’s rural population, the court affirmed that the critical contributions of veterinary surgeons cannot be discounted or treated as secondary by the state.
