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Vijaya Bhiku Kadam vs Mayani Bhag Shikshan Prasarak Mandal & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 775Decided 28 Aug 2023
Civil Appeal Nos. 5483-5484 of 2023
Abhay S. Oka · Sanjay Karol

Background

The appellant, a lecturer with a PhD in English, competed with another candidate (respondent no.5) for lecturer posts at a college affiliated to Shivaji University, Maharashtra, across a confusing series of four job advertisements issued between 1993 and 1996: one post open-category, one reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates. Depending on which advertisement's selection process was looked at, the two candidates' relative merit and category placement kept shifting, leading to prolonged litigation before the state's University and College Tribunal and the Bombay High Court, which eventually left the appellant reduced from a full-time to a half-time/part-time lecturer.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that in the second (1994) advertisement process, the appellant had actually ranked first in merit for the open-category post and was appointed and approved by the University against it: a selection that respondent no.5 never challenged at the time. Considering the appellant's long service and the peculiar, tangled facts, the Court invoked its special power under Article 142 of the Constitution to do complete justice: it directed her reinstatement as a full-time lecturer effective from January 1995, ordered the State to release the necessary grant-in-aid for her salary, and fixed her seniority just below respondent no.5, while denying her back-pay for the intervening years (that period would count only for retirement benefits). The Court expressly clarified this order was passed under Article 142 and should not be treated as a precedent.

Lesson Learnt

Extremely tangled, decades-long service disputes can sometimes only be resolved through the Supreme Court's special constitutional power to do "complete justice," rather than through the ordinary rules of merit and seniority, but such relief is tailored to the specific facts and is not meant to set a precedent for other cases.

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

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