C/M Kisan Inter College Manager v. The State of Uttar Pradesh
Background
A teacher was appointed as an L.T. Grade Assistant Teacher at an aided college in 1984-85 in a vacancy created by a colleague's promotion, but the college stopped his salary when his appointment was found not to follow the prescribed selection procedure. Over the next two decades the matter spawned a tangle of writ petitions and interim court orders, during which the teacher continued discharging duties and was eventually regularized by the Regional Level Committee in 2010 based on a departmental inquiry confirming continuous service since 1985. The college challenged this regularization, and after a single judge of the Allahabad High Court ruled against the teacher, a Division Bench reversed that and restored the regularization, prompting the college's appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the central factual question, whether the teacher had actually worked continuously from 1985 to 1995, the minimum period needed for regularization eligibility, was conclusively answered in his favour by a departmental inquiry and by the college's own written endorsements acknowledging his continuous service. The Court found the single judge had wrongly ignored an earlier High Court order directing that the teacher's regularization claim be considered on merits, and agreed that since the other teacher whose promotion created this vacancy was separately and validly regularized, there was no dispute that a genuine vacancy existed for this appointment too. Upholding the Division Bench's restoration of the regularization, the Supreme Court dismissed the college's appeal, by which time the teacher had already reached retirement age.
Lesson Learnt
In long-running service disputes, a court will not disturb a regularization that is backed by an official departmental inquiry and the employer's own prior written admissions of continuous service, even if the employer later disputes the same facts to avoid financial liability.