Pooran Chand v. Chancellor and Ors.
Background
Following a 2005 advertisement by a medical/dental university, the appellant was selected and appointed as Assistant Professor while respondent no. 4 (Dr. Jitendra Kumar Rao) was appointed as Lecturer, both on recommendation of the same Selection Committee, approved by the Executive Council. After respondent no. 4 was himself promoted to Assistant Professor in 2007, he submitted representations, and eventually, in 2009, a representation to the University's Chancellor, claiming that his earlier experience as a Senior Research Fellow with the WHO should have been counted, entitling him to seniority over the appellant. The Chancellor rejected this representation, but the Allahabad High Court later allowed respondent no. 4's writ petition, quashing the appellant's original 2005 appointment as Assistant Professor and directing the university to treat him instead as initially appointed only as a Lecturer.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the governing statute (Section 53 of the UP Act, 2002) required any challenge to a university appointment to be raised before the Chancellor within three months of when it could first have been raised, and respondent no. 4 had never actually challenged the appellant's 2005 appointment within that window: his 2009 representation was only about his own seniority claim, raised only after he himself was promoted in 2007. The Court found the High Court erred in entertaining, for the first time in a writ petition filed more than four years after the appointment, a challenge that respondent no. 4 himself had never made before the Chancellor, and distinguished the precedents relied on by the respondent as dealing with appointments made in clear breach of mandatory recruitment rules (unlike here, where the appellant was properly selected, recommended, and approved). The Court allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's judgment, and dismissed respondent no. 4's writ petition.
Lesson Learnt
Service-law and university-appointment disputes must be raised through the statutory remedy and within the time limit the governing law prescribes; courts will not entertain a years-delayed, belatedly-raised challenge to someone else's appointment, especially when the complaining party's real grievance was always about their own seniority, not the other's eligibility.