Service law – Retirement – Extension of retirement age from 60 to 65 years – Appellant served as a teaching staff member for 16 years at a college in Assam – Thereafter, in 2007 joined West Bengal University to the post of Secretary, Faculty Council for Post-Graduate Studies, in 2012 promoted to the post of Senior Secretary, and continued in service uninterruptedly – In 2021, the West Bengal Government issued a Notification dated 24.02.2021, extending the retirement age from 60 to 65 years, provided the employee had at least 10 years of continuous teaching experience in any State-aided university/college – Appellant denied the extension as he had no teaching experience in a ‘university or college aided by the State of West Bengal – Writ petition thereagainst allowed by the Single Bench of the High Court, however, the Division Bench set aside the same – Correctness:
Held: To insist on past teaching experience of 10 years within the State of West Bengal for extension of service, particularly when the employee has already worked for fourteen years is arbitrary, illegal and totally unjustified – The text, the context, the purpose as well as the object of providing, “continuous teaching experience of 10 years in any university” as a condition in the Notification dated 24.02.2021 is not at all to exclude such experience from universities or colleges outside the State of West Bengal, it was solely to distinguish between state-aided and private institutions – Classifying employees based on past teaching experience from Universities within or outside West Bengal, particularly at the verge of retirement, after having served for decades lacks nexus and discernible object – While prescribing the condition of 10 years, the Notification employed the same expression, “in any Stateaided University or Government-aided College”, to indicate that the employment must be in a university or a college receiving State aid – In any event, excluding those who had teaching experience from a university or a college outside the State of West Bengal for the purpose of granting the benefit of extended date of retirement does not stand to reason – By virtue of the Notification, the benefit of extended date of retirement given to teachers is now extended to non-teaching employees, for whom teaching experience may in fact not be relevant – Extension of the retirement date, dependent on past experience of teaching in a university or a college located in West Bengal alone has no object to subserve and as such classification of employers into those who have acquired teaching experience in West Bengal and those who acquired such experience outside West Bengal is artificial, discriminatory and arbitrary – It is an artificial classification, a case of a suspect classification intended to sub-serve only parochial interests and nothing more – Stand taken by the State and the university is illegal and violative of the equality norm – Impugned judgment passed by the Division Bench of the High Court set aside. [Paras 15-21, 24, 27, 28]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Nidhi Jain. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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