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Muhammed A.A. & Ors. vs. State of Kerala & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 199Decided 18 Feb 2022
Civil Appeal Nos. 1498-1500 of 2022
L. Nageswara Rao · B.R. Gavai

Background

The Central Electricity Authority's 2010 Safety Regulations prescribe minimum qualifications (Regulations 6 and 7) for engineers, supervisors and technicians handling electrical safety functions, while Regulation 116 allows the government to permit "deviation" from these Regulations. Kerala's electricity board employees, transferred to a successor company (KSEBL) under a 2013 transfer scheme, included some who lacked these prescribed qualifications; the State Government issued an order in February 2019 exempting such employees from the qualification requirement so they could be promoted. This was challenged in the Kerala High Court, where a Single Judge struck down the exemption entirely as beyond the government's power, but a Division Bench partly restored it, upholding the exemption only for employees who had joined before the 2013 transfer scheme, not those who joined KSEBL afterward. Both the affected employees/KSEBL and other aggrieved parties appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the Division Bench's middle-ground ruling in full. It held that the word "deviation" in Regulation 116 is broad enough to include granting an "exemption" or relaxation from the qualification requirements, rejecting the argument (based on English contract-law precedents about the word "deviation") that deviation must mean something narrower than exemption, and that this power has historically existed even under the pre-2010 electricity safety rules. However, the Court agreed that this exemption power could only protect employees who were actually part of the electricity board on the date of the 2013 transfer scheme, because the statutory transfer protections under Section 133 of the Electricity Act are explicitly limited to employees transferred as of that date; extending the exemption to people hired by KSEBL afterward had no legal basis. The Court also noted safety considerations and the board's positive safety track record but held that did not justify open-ended exemption for later hires.

Lesson Learnt

A government's power to grant a "deviation" from a technical safety regulation can validly include a qualification exemption, but such special protections tied to a service transfer scheme apply strictly to the employees covered on the date of that scheme. They cannot be stretched to cover people who joined the organisation only later.

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

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