The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has ruled that ad hoc service cannot be ignored while considering employees for promotion, provided the initial appointment was made through a lawful process and the employee served continuously. The court dismissed two special appeals filed by the state government, upholding relief granted to the petitioners.
A division bench comprising Justice Shekhar B Saraf and Justice Manjeev Shukla affirmed that ad hoc service, when followed by regularisation, must be counted along with regular service for determining eligibility for promotion.
The court further clarified that where a junior employee has already been promoted, a senior employee would be entitled to promotion from the same date, even if their regularisation took place later.
The case arose from a dispute involving Anil Kumar and Shailendra Singh, who were appointed as junior engineers in the Housing and Urban Planning Department on an ad hoc basis in 1986. They were later regularised, but a controversy emerged when employees appointed after them were promoted to the post of assistant engineer with effect from January 18, 1995, while the petitioners were denied similar benefits.
A single-judge bench had earlier granted relief to the petitioners, directing that they be considered for promotion. The state government challenged this order, arguing that since the petitioners were not regular employees at the relevant time, they were not entitled to retrospective promotion.
Rejecting the state’s contention, the High Court relied on principles laid down by the Supreme Court of India and noted that similarly placed employees had already been granted the benefit. The bench observed that denying the same treatment to the petitioners would be unjust.
With this reasoning, the court dismissed the state’s appeals and upheld the earlier order in favour of the petitioners.
