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Sunil Shamrao Jadhav & Ors. v. Kolhapur Municipal Corporation Through Its Commissioner

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 605Decided 12 Jul 2018
Civil Appeal No. 1714 of 2009
Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul

Background

In 1992, Kolhapur Municipal Corporation invited applications to directly recruit 16 Assistant Traffic Inspectors, after no suitable candidates were available through promotion. Since none of the applicants had the mandatory 5 years' experience in a transport undertaking, the Corporation used its power to relax that qualification and appointed 15 candidates, including the appellants. A trade union challenged these appointments, and the High Court ruled the Corporation could not have relaxed the qualification, though it allowed the Corporation to hold fresh recruitment with the appellants permitted to reapply with age relaxation. The appellants, who had by then worked for about 24 years (helped by a Supreme Court stay of the High Court's order), challenged this before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Corporation filed an affidavit revealing that most of the relevant posts, Assistant Traffic Inspector and its feeder cadre of Traffic Controller, remained significantly understaffed and vacant, with no immediately available promotee candidates, while the appellants had meanwhile served about 23-24 years in these operationally crucial roles. Given this practical reality and the passage of time, the Supreme Court allowed the appeals, permitting the appellants (and others recruited with them under the 1992 notification) to continue in their posts as regularly appointed employees, while directing the Corporation to also take steps to promote eligible candidates as soon as they become available.

Lesson Learnt

Courts may decline to unsettle long-standing employment arrangements, even ones with a technical legal defect in the original appointment process, where undoing them after decades of service would seriously disrupt essential public services and where the organisation has a genuine, demonstrated shortage of eligible candidates.

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

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