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Haldhar Prasad Gupta v. Deepak Kumar & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 68Decided 8 Jan 2025
Misc. Application (Diary No. 38122 of 2024) in Contempt Petition (C) No. 110 of 2019 in Civil Appeal No. 2703 of 2017
Justice J.K. Maheshwari · Justice Rajesh Bindal

Background

The petitioner, appointed as a Lab In-charge at a college under B.N. Mandal University in 1978, had his absorption into government service allowed by a One Man Commission and later confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2017. After the Court's 2019 order in a related contempt petition directed payment of due arrears, the petitioner filed this fresh application alleging the arrears of salary and pension had still not been paid, and that his pension had since been put on hold because of separate proceedings concerning other absorbed employees.

Decision Breakdown

The Court found that the questions of how much salary/arrears the petitioner was actually owed, and whether his pension could be withheld, both required a fact-finding inquiry that the Supreme Court itself was not the right forum to conduct. Rather than decide the merits, the Bench directed the University's Registrar/Vice Chancellor to hold a proper inquiry: the petitioner must submit his claim with supporting documents, the university must give him (and the college/State) a hearing and pass a reasoned order on salary and arrears within three months, and decide the pension claim (counting service from the date of absorption) uninfluenced by the orders that had frozen other employees' pensions, with payment following within two months. Any excess already paid could be recovered later through due process, and either side dissatisfied with the university's decision could approach the High Court.

Lesson Learnt

Even after the Supreme Court confirms an employee's right to absorption and back-benefits, disputes over the exact quantum of arrears or pension are often sent back to the employer/authority for a fact-based inquiry rather than being decided directly by the Court: litigants should be prepared for this administrative follow-up stage even after apparently "winning" at the top court.

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

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