Harish Chandra Shrivastava vs The State of Bihar
Background
Five Ayurveda lecturers had been appointed at a private Ayurvedic college in Bihar in 1978-79 and later promoted to Reader/Professor. When Bihar nationalised private Ayurvedic medical colleges under a 1985 Act and took over their college in 1986, a series of Screening Committees were set up over the years to decide which teaching staff would be absorbed into government service. A later Review Screening Committee found these five teachers "unfit" for absorption on the ground that they lacked three years of post-qualification teaching experience on the date of their original 1978-79 appointment, and the Patna High Court upheld their termination on that basis.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court allowed the appeals, holding that the High Court and the Screening Committee had misread the 1986 government notification, which required eligibility (minimum qualifications and teaching experience) to be assessed as of the cut-off date of the takeover (1 June 1986), not as of the date of the teachers' original appointment in 1978-79. It also noted the logical impossibility in the State's position: a person could not be barred from being recruited as a lecturer for lacking prior teaching experience while also being required to have gained that same experience before being recruited. Since all five appellants indisputably met the qualification and experience requirements as of the 1986 cut-off date, their termination was unlawful and set aside. The Court ordered reinstatement: the one appellant not yet at superannuation age was to be reinstated with notional service benefits (but no back pay for the unserved period), while the other four, who had since reached superannuation age, were to have their service treated as continuous and qualifying for pension and retiral benefits (again without back pay), with retiral dues to be paid within three months or carry 12% annual interest.
Lesson Learnt
When a government notification fixes a specific "cut-off date" for assessing an employee's eligibility on nationalisation/takeover of an institution, authorities cannot instead judge eligibility against an earlier, different date (such as the original hiring date) to disqualify long-serving staff: the cut-off date in the governing notification controls.