The plight of the junior college librarians are quite worrisome as recently answering reference made by a division bench of the High Court Nagpur specially constituted Full Bench consisting of Justice Ravi K Deshpande, Justice Atul Chandurkar, and Justice Milind N Jadhav has ruled that a Librarian even if having higher qualifications than the minimum prescribed by Schedule-B of the Rules of 1981, will not be entitled to higher pay-scale of Rs 1400- 2600.
The question posed for consideration before the Full Bench was whether a Librarian engaged in a Secondary School/Junior College was entitled to pay-scale in accordance with his educational qualifications. In other words, whether a Librarian, who is a graduate having a diploma/degree in Library Science is entitled to pay-scale of Rs 1400- 2300 or to pay-scale of Rs 1400- 2600, as admissible to a trained teacher.
The Full Bench has ruled further that Librarians, irrespective of holding higher qualifications than the minimum qualifications prescribed by Schedule-B, will be entitled to the pay-scale of Rs 1400-2300 as prescribed in Schedule-C of the Rules of 1981. While doing so, the court has overruled its two earlier division bench judgments holding view contrary to this ruling and directed the Registry of the court to place the two writ petitions before the appropriate division bench for further consideration.