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The Chief Personnel Officer & Ors. vs. A Nishanth George

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 92Decided 25 Jan 2022
Civil Appeal No. 294 of 2022

Background

The Railways ran a scheme (originally "Safety Related Retirement Scheme," later renamed LARSGESS) letting Drivers, Gangmen and similar safety-category staff retire early in exchange for a job for one of their wards/children, subject to conditions like age, years of service and the ward's medical fitness. The Punjab & Haryana High Court later held the scheme was really a "back-door entry" into government jobs that violated the constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity in public employment, and the Railway Board eventually terminated the scheme in 2017-2018, with only a narrow exception preserved for employees who had already retired before termination but whose wards' appointments were stuck for procedural reasons. In these two connected cases, the sons of two railway employees (a Trackman and a Trolleyman) sought jobs under the scheme even though, in one case the ward was found medically unfit for his father's post and only fit for a lower category, and in the other case the employee had already superannuated normally rather than retired early, with a corrected birth date raising further eligibility disputes. The Madras High Court (Madurai Bench) had ruled in the respondents' favour in both cases, prompting the Railways to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court traced the full history of the scheme, including its own earlier three-judge bench ruling in Manjit v. Union of India, which had already held that LARSGESS was fundamentally at odds with Article 16 of the Constitution (equal opportunity in public employment) and that the government's decision to terminate it was justified, closing all pending claims under it. Applying that reasoning, the Court found neither respondent qualified for the scheme's narrow saved exception: in one case the ward could only be appointed in the lowest grade of his father's own category and was medically unfit for that category, and could not claim a different post; in the other, the employee had already retired on ordinary superannuation rather than voluntary early retirement, which took the case outside the scheme altogether, and the son's delayed second application (filed years later, after the age cut-off) could not revive the claim. The Court held that no one can claim a vested or legitimate expectation of appointment under a scheme that was itself constitutionally suspect and has since been discontinued. It set aside both Madras High Court judgments and dismissed the underlying writ petitions.

Lesson Learnt

A government employment scheme that effectively allows one person's job to be handed to their relative undermines the constitutional right to equal opportunity in public employment, and once such a scheme is found invalid and discontinued, no individual, however sympathetic the circumstances, can claim an enforceable right to a job under it, especially where they fail to meet even the scheme's own eligibility conditions.

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

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