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Pankaj Prakash v. United India Insurance Co. Ltd. & Anr.

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 745Decided 10 Jul 2019
Civil Appeal Nos. 5340-5341 of 2019
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Indira Banerjee

Background

The appellant, an officer with a public sector insurance company, was denied promotion from Scale III to Scale IV in the 2014-15 promotion exercise. He contended that his Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) entries for 2010-11 ("C" grade) and 2011-12 ("B" grade) had never been communicated to him, depriving him of the chance to represent against them, contrary to Supreme Court precedent requiring every APAR entry to be disclosed. The Allahabad High Court had dismissed his writ petition and review petition, holding that absent an adverse or below-benchmark entry, non-communication caused no actionable grievance, leading to this appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that its earlier rulings in Dev Dutt v. Union of India and Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India unequivocally required every appraisal entry, good, average, or poor, to be communicated to the employee within a reasonable time, and that this obligation was not limited to adverse entries alone or to the year from which the employer chose to start complying. Since the appellant's lower "B" grading for 2011-12 could have materially affected his marks in the promotion exercise, and he was never given a chance to represent against it, the Court found a legitimate grievance, even though the appellant had since been promoted in 2018 after the relevant exercise closed. It set aside the High Court's judgments and directed the insurance company to communicate the previously undisclosed entries, allow the appellant to make representations, have them considered within set timelines by a sufficiently senior authority, and decide whether any modification to the 2014-15 promotion decision was warranted.

Lesson Learnt

A public sector employer must communicate every entry in an employee's performance appraisal, not only negative ones, because undisclosed entries can silently affect promotion decisions: an employee has a right to know and respond to all appraisal gradings that are used against them.

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

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