The petitioners had, for three years, actually received a 10% annual increment, until it was stopped and the order granting it withdrawn. Their case was that the withdrawal was arbitrary. The High Court found the real problem lay further back: the 2020 resolution they relied on had granted the increment to the Society’s own employees, and a subordinate officer had, in communicating it, wrongly stretched it to cover Watershed Development Team members, a separate category, who were never its intended beneficiaries. The withdrawal, therefore, only corrected an error. But the Court softened the blow: what had already been paid need not be returned.
Patna: The Patna High Court has dismissed a writ petition filed by members of the Watershed Development Teams (WDTs) in Bihar claiming a 10% annual salary increment, holding that the governing-body resolution on which they relied applied only to the employees of the Bihar Watershed Development Society (BWDS) and not to WDT members, who form a distinct category under the applicable guidelines [Sweta Chaudhary and Others v. The State of Bihar and Others].
Justice Dr. Anshuman held that the withdrawal of the increment, so far as WDT members were concerned, was lawful, while directing that any benefit already paid to them would not be recovered.
The background
The petitioners were appointed as members of the Watershed Development Teams under the BWDS, in the office of Soil Conservation, as “WDT Member, Social Mobilization and Institution Building Expert”, initially on a monthly honorarium of Rs 11,000, later enhanced to Rs 15,000. That enhancement, in 2014, flowed from a 2013 governing-body resolution specifically concerning WDT members.
In September 2020, the governing body of the BWDS resolved to grant a 10% annual increment with effect from April 1, 2019. That resolution was communicated by an office order of the Chief Executive Officer in November 2020, and, on the strength of it, the petitioners received the 10% increment from 2019 to April 2022, when the payment was stopped. After their representations went unanswered, they moved the High Court; and during the pendency of the petition, the 2020 office order was itself cancelled by a fresh order of November 2024, which the petitioners then also challenged.
Two categories, one resolution
The Court identified the single question on which the case turned: whether the petitioners were WDT staff or BWDS staff. Under the Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects, 2008 (revised 2011), it noted, the Watershed Development Team and the Society are separate, though both function under the same governing body headed by the Development Commissioner, Bihar, as Chairman of the BWDS. This overlap of a common governing body, the Court observed, was “the real point of confusion”.
Reading the successive resolutions closely, the Court found a clear distinction. The 2013 resolution, which had enhanced the honorarium to Rs 15,000, was expressly for WDT members. The 2020 resolution, by contrast, granted the 10% increment to the employees of the BWDS, its own Resolution No. 4 speaking of the Society’s employees. The Court held:
“…the decision of the Governing Body dated 19.09.2013 was for WDT members, whereas the decision dated 23.09.2020 of the Governing Body was for BWDS employees. Therefore, this Court finds that there is no illegality in the issuance of the letter dated 27.11.2024, as BWDS employees are different from WDT members.”
The error, on the Court’s analysis, lay in the 2020 office order of the Chief Executive Officer, which, in communicating the governing body’s decision, had wrongly extended the 10% increment to WDT members as well, when the underlying resolution had confined it to BWDS employees. The 2024 order withdrawing that extension was therefore not a fresh decision overriding the governing body, but a correction of a communication that had misstated the governing body’s resolution.
The hierarchy objection
The petitioners had argued that the withdrawal was invalid because the increment had been granted by a decision associated with the Development Commissioner, who chairs the BWDS, and could not be undone at the instance of a committee headed by the lower-ranking Additional Secretary, Agriculture Department. The State’s answer, which the Court’s reasoning accepted, was that the Development Commissioner’s decision had not been reversed at all; what had been corrected was the Chief Executive Officer’s erroneous extension of that decision to a category it never covered. On that footing, the rank-hierarchy objection did not arise, because the governing body’s actual resolution remained intact and was simply being given effect to.
The outcome, and the equity
Holding that the appointment letter designated the petitioners as WDT members and that the 2020 increment resolution did not extend to that category, the Court found no ground to grant relief and dismissed the petition, sustaining the 2024 order that had cancelled the increment for WDT members.
The Court, however, tempered the outcome. It expressly observed that any benefit already granted to the petitioners or similarly situated persons by virtue of the 2020 office order shall not be refunded, declining, in effect, the State’s plea that the sums paid to the petitioners between 2019 and 2022 be recovered from them.
Why it matters
The case is a reminder that an entitlement to pay flows from the decision that actually grants it, not from the letter that communicates it, and certainly not from an error in that letter. However genuinely the petitioners believed themselves covered, and however long they were in fact paid, the governing body’s 2020 resolution simply did not extend the increment to their category; a subordinate officer could not enlarge its scope by wording an office order more broadly than the decision it was meant to convey. Once that mismatch was identified, the correction of the office order was not an arbitrary denial of a benefit but the removal of one that had never been sanctioned.
The distinction between the two categories, WDT members and BWDS employees, sharing a common governing body did much of the work, and the Court was candid that this shared structure was what generated the confusion. Its careful separation of the 2013 resolution (for WDT members) from the 2020 resolution (for BWDS employees) is a useful illustration of how such disputes are resolved: not by the equities of who was paid what, but by tracing each benefit back to the precise decision that created it and the category it named.
What saves the judgment from harshness is the direction on refund. Where an employee has received money in good faith on the strength of an official order, and the excess arose from the authority’s own error rather than any misrepresentation by the employee, the courts have consistently held that recovery should not ordinarily be enforced, a principle most closely associated with the Supreme Court’s decision in State of Punjab v. Rafiq Masih. By protecting the sums already paid while denying the increment going forward, the Court struck the balance that line of authority contemplates: the petitioners keep what they received without fault, but acquire no continuing right to a benefit that was never theirs to claim.
Case Title: Sweta Chaudhary and Others v. The State of Bihar and Others [Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No. 17097 of 2024]
Bench: Justice Dr. Anshuman, High Court of Judicature at Patna
Date of Judgment: September 18, 2026 (reserved September 3, 2026)
Status: Writ petition dismissed. Withdrawal of the 10% increment for WDT members upheld; amounts already paid not to be recovered.