Service law: Retrospective seniority – Claim for, from a date when an employee was not even borne in service – Held: Retrospective seniority unless directed by court or expressly provided by the applicable Rules, should not be allowed, as in so doing, others who had earlier entered service, would be impacted – Seniority benefit can accrue only after a person joins service – In the instant case, precedence of seniority was claimed by respondent over other regular employees who had entered service much before him – Respondent’s case was of compassionate appointment on the order of court – The court’s direction to the State was to appoint him within one month without specifying that the appointment would have a retrospective effect – Respondent never raised any claim before the court for relating his appointment to an earlier date (1.8.1985) – Post appointment, he never raised any such grievance within reasonable time – Six years later, he made a representation and same was rejected with the observation that on 1.8.1985, he was yet to enter service – Respondent slept over his rights, and never earlier pointedly addressed his present claim either before the court (in the earlier round) or to the State, soon after his appointment – Moreover, his was a compassionate appointment without any element of competitive recruitment where the similarly recruited stole a march over him – High Court was in error in granting retrospective seniority to him – Service jurisprudence.
Allowing the appeal, the Court
HELD: 1.1 The respondent entered service only on 10.2.1996 and yet under the impugned judgment, the High Court directed counting of his seniority from 20.11.1985 when he was not borne in service. The jurisprudence in the field of service law advise that retrospective seniority cannot be claimed from a date when an employee is not even borne in service. Retrospective seniority unless directed by court or expressly provided by the applicable Rules, should not be allowed, as in so doing, others who had earlier entered service, will be impacted. [Para 10][51-F-G]
1.2 The compassionate appointment of the respondent is not being questioned here but importantly he is claiming seniority benefit for 10 years without working for a single day during that period. In this situation, the seniority balance cannot be tilted against those who entered service much before the respondent. Seniority benefit can accrue only after a person joins service and to say that benefits can be earned retrospectively would be erroneous. [Para 12][52-D-E]
Shitla Prasad Shukla v. State of UP and Ors. (1986) Suppl. SCC 185 : [1986] SCR 106 – held inapplicable.
C. Jayachandran v. State of Kerala (2020) 5 SCC 230 – distinguished.
Ganga Vishan Gujrati And Ors. v. State of Rajasthan and Ors. (2019) 16 SCC 28 : [2019] 11 SCR 444 – referred to.
2. The present is a case of compassionate order made on this court’s order. The respondent never raised any claim for relating his appointment to an earlier date from this Court. Post appointment, he never raised any grievance within reasonable time, for fixing his date of appointment as 20.11.1985. Six years later, only on 10.9.2002, he made a representation and the same was rejected with the observation that on 1.8.1985, the respondent was yet to enter service. Thus, the respondent slept over his rights, and never earlier pointedly addressed his present claim either to the Supreme Court (in the earlier round) or to the State, soon after his appointment. The records reflect that the State have faithfully implemented the direction issued by this Court and appointed the respondent. Moreover, the action of the authorities in determination of the respondent’s seniority from the date of entering service is found to be consistent with the applicable laws. There could be individual cases where a bunch of applicants are recruited through a common competitive process but for one reason or another, one of them is left out while others get appointed. When the denial of analogous appointment is founded to be arbitrary and legally incorrect, the benefit of notional seniority may be conferred on the deprived individual. However, the present is not a case of that category. The High Court was in error in granting retrospective seniority to the respondent. [Paras 13, 14 and 15][53-E-G; 54-A-E]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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