Surendra Kumar & Ors. v. Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority & Ors.
Background
The appellants had been engaged as contractual Assistant Managers (Civil) by the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority since 1994, without being appointed against any sanctioned post, and continued working for over a decade. Under a 2003 regularization policy (approved by the State Government in 2008), they were eventually given regular appointments in August 2010. The Allahabad High Court's Division Bench, however, relying on the Supreme Court's landmark Uma Devi ruling against "backdoor" regularization, had quashed these appointments as illegal and ordered an inquiry, prompting this appeal.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court was wrong to set aside the appellants' appointments, since their regularization had followed a validly approved government policy and nobody had actually challenged the legality of their appointment before the High Court: the real dispute was only about whether regularization should apply retrospectively. The Court found that because the regularization policy only came into force in 2008, the appellants could not claim regularization backdated to 2002 (when a since-withdrawn recruitment advertisement was issued), and having accepted their 2010 appointment orders and joined service, they could not now claim an earlier effective date. It therefore set aside the High Court's quashing of the 2010 appointments but declined the appellants' separate claim for retrospective regularization and consequential seniority, allowing the appeal only in part.
Lesson Learnt
A regular appointment made under a validly approved government regularization policy cannot be struck down as "backdoor entry" under the Uma Devi doctrine merely because the employee had earlier worked on contract, but an employee also cannot claim seniority or benefits retrospective to a date before the regularization policy itself came into existence.