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Union of India & Ors. v. Lt. Col. Sameer Singh

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 1307Decided 2 Dec 2019
Civil Appeal No. 9143 of 2019
Justice Deepak Gupta · Justice Aniruddha Bose

Background

An Army Lieutenant Colonel serving in the Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) was denied "Permanent Secondment" (a form of permanent posting) because his Technical Assessment Reports (TARs) rated him "not yet fit" and later "not fit," even though he met all the eligibility criteria listed in a 2011 government policy (Office Memorandum) that governed such postings. He challenged this before the Delhi High Court, arguing that TARs were not even mentioned as a relevant factor under the 2011 policy, and the High Court ruled in his favour. The Union of India appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that an older 2004 policy requiring TARs still applied alongside the newer one.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the 2011 Office Memorandum laid out a comprehensive, self-contained set of criteria and expressly stated it "supersedes all previous instructions/guidelines issued on the subject", which necessarily included the 2004 policy that had relied on TARs. The Court noted that if the government genuinely wanted TARs to remain a mandatory criterion, it could easily have said so when it later amended the 2011 memorandum or issued a subsequent letter in 2014 emphasizing TAR importance, but it never did. Since the plain language of the governing 2011 policy did not list TARs as a criterion, the Army could not deny the officer's permanent posting based on them, and the Supreme Court dismissed the government's appeal, upholding the High Court's judgment in the officer's favour.

Lesson Learnt

When a government department issues a later, comprehensive policy that says it supersedes all earlier instructions, authorities cannot continue applying criteria from the older policy that the new one left out: the plain text of the latest governing rule controls.

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

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