Vivek Mudgil v. State of U.P. & Ors.
Background
The appellant, a physics lecturer, applied in 2002 for the post of Principal of a UP school, a post requiring ten years' teaching experience, but he had only 9 years and 3 months because part of that period was spent on study leave abroad in Czechoslovakia. He was nonetheless selected and eventually appointed as Principal in 2008 after earlier litigation delays, but his appointment was cancelled the same year once a complaint revealed he lacked the required experience. His legal challenges failed before a single judge and a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, both of which held that the study-leave period could not count as teaching experience and that ten years' experience was a mandatory qualification.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court agreed that the appellant genuinely lacked the mandatory ten years of teaching experience on the relevant date, since time spent on foreign study leave is not teaching experience, and upheld the High Court's view that this qualification was mandatory under the governing regulations. It also rejected his separate argument based on a later "exemption" order condoning 9 months of his shortfall, holding that the exemption was granted without any retrospective effect and without any direction from the Supreme Court to do so, and therefore could not cure his disqualification as it stood on the original selection date. The appeals and the connected transferred case were accordingly dismissed, though the Court left open for future cases the separate legal question of whether such exemption powers survive under the later 1982 Act.
Lesson Learnt
Eligibility conditions for a public post are assessed as they stood on the relevant cut-off date, and a later exemption or relaxation order does not retroactively cure an original disqualification unless it is expressly made retrospective.