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Pankaj Kumar v. The State of Jharkhand

Civil Appeal · 2021 INSC 414Decided 19 Aug 2021
Civil Appeal No. 4864 of 2021
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

After Bihar was split to create Jharkhand in 2000, Pankaj Kumar, born in a district that became part of Jharkhand, educated there, and already serving as a government teacher there, was selected for a Scheduled Caste reserved post in Jharkhand's civil services but his appointment was withheld on the ground that his service record showed his family's origin as Patna, Bihar, making him a "migrant" ineligible for Jharkhand's SC quota. In a separate but connected batch of cases, several men who had been appointed as police constables under SC/ST/OBC reservation in Jharkhand had their services terminated years later on similar "migrant" grounds, after they had produced caste certificates issued by Bihar rather than Jharkhand.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that under Section 73 of the Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000, a person who was ordinarily resident in, and whose service was absorbed into, the new State of Jharkhand on the appointed day retains the benefit of reservation in Jharkhand, and such a person is not a "migrant" merely because his family's place of origin was in undivided Bihar; Pankaj Kumar was therefore entitled to appointment with seniority and notional pay from his original selection date. For the terminated constables, who genuinely qualified as migrants under the applicable test, the Court nonetheless invoked its special constitutional power (Article 142) to order their reinstatement with notional pay (though without back wages), given that they had acted in good faith, had already served for years, and had lost about thirteen years to litigation through no fault of their own. The Court clarified that a person may claim reservation benefits in only one of the two successor states, not both.

Lesson Learnt

Where a state is reorganised, your eligibility for reservation benefits generally follows where you were actually residing and serving on the date of the split, not simply your family's historical place of origin, and the Supreme Court can use its special equity powers to protect long-serving employees even when a technical rule is against them.

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

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