Akhilesh Kumar Singh v. Ram Dawan and Ors.
Background
A Class IV employee (Daftari) of an intermediate college in Uttar Pradesh, having acquired the required qualifications, sought promotion to the sole sanctioned post of Clerk in the college after the incumbent Clerk retired. While his request was pending, the college instead advertised and directly recruited the appellant, Akhilesh Kumar Singh, to that post. The passed-over employee challenged the direct recruitment in the High Court, arguing that the single Clerk post should have gone to him by promotion; a Division Bench of the High Court agreed and set aside the direct recruitment, prompting the directly-recruited appointee to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the High Court's ruling that the Clerk's post had to be filled by promotion. The Court rejected the appellant's argument that filling a single post by promotion amounted to impermissible "reservation" of a single post: it clarified that reservation under Article 16(4) applies only to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, and has nothing to do with a quota or channel for filling a post from employees already serving in the feeder cadre. Since the applicable service Regulations clearly required 50% of Clerk posts (rounded up to the whole single post here) to be filled by promotion from eligible Class IV staff, the direct recruitment of the appellant was invalid.
Lesson Learnt
A rule that reserves a job for promotion from existing staff is not the same as caste-based "reservation" under the Constitution, and employers cannot bypass a mandatory promotion channel, even for a single sanctioned post, by advertising it for direct recruitment instead.