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B.S. Murthy and Others vs A. Ravinder Singh and Others

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 305Decided 15 Mar 2022
Civil Appeal No. 3968 of 2009
Uday Umesh Lalit · Hemant Gupta · S. Ravindra Bhat

Background

Inspectors of Central Excise were recruited through two channels, direct recruitment and promotion from ministerial staff, in a fixed 75:25 ratio, but the governing rules did not clearly settle how seniority between the two groups should be calculated, leading to decades of shifting office memoranda, seniority lists, and litigation before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). The erstwhile Andhra Pradesh High Court eventually set aside a CAT order that had favoured the promotee inspectors, holding that promotions made during a period when direct recruitment was banned (1984-1990) exceeded the promotees' quota and had to yield to later direct recruits. The promotee inspectors appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that no employee, whether a direct recruit or a promotee, can claim seniority from a date earlier than their actual appointment. Examining departmental records, it found that the promotions made during 1984-1990 were regular, filled within the promotees' lawful 25% quota, and were not the result of any deliberate under-reporting of direct-recruit vacancies to the recruiting agency, so the High Court's reasoning that these promotions were "in excess of quota" was factually and legally mistaken. The Court restored the CAT's order, laid down detailed findings on how seniority should be fixed for various categories of appointees, and directed the department to prepare a final seniority list applying these findings within three months.

Lesson Learnt

In quota-based recruitment systems, an executive policy decision to pause one recruitment channel (such as a temporary ban on direct recruitment) cannot retroactively be treated as unfair "excess" promotion of the other channel, and no government employee can be granted seniority dating back to before they were actually appointed.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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