The Supreme Court set aside an employee's reinstatement at Delhi Technological University, holding that his resignation — though initially accepted by an unauthorised officer — was cured by the Board's later ratification and that he could not disown a resignation whose benefits he had already taken; it also upheld denial of his separate resignation withdrawal at NIT Calicut.
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Find a Lawyer Near Me →"I gave years of service, and when I decided to move on, I did everything asked of me — I even requested my exit be moved earlier. Only later did I learn the person who accepted my resignation wasn't even authorized to do so. I tried to withdraw it, but by then I'd already taken a new job elsewhere. Now that new job hasn't worked out the way I hoped either, and when I tried to reclaim my footing, both institutions turned against me — one saying my resignation was somehow legally cured after the fact, the other saying I never had the right to change my mind in the first place. I feel caught between two systems, neither willing to simply let me stay employed."
Moral Universe
The employee frames his situation as one where technical, after-the-fact institutional fixes (ratification, statutory provisos) are being used to trap him in decisions he made hastily or under mistaken assumptions about proper authority, while he sees himself as having acted in good faith throughout.
Emotional Driver
A sense of career instability and being outmaneuvered by institutions using formal doctrines to avoid taking him back, despite what he perceives as clear procedural irregularities on their part.
Objective
Reinstatement to a stable government post — either at DTU or NITC — with back wages recognizing the disruption caused by what he considers improperly handled resignations.
Blind Spots
The narrative does not fully account for his own active role in requesting an earlier release date, accepting all exit benefits, and then using those very benefits (his experience certificate) to secure his next job — conduct the Court treated as central to why he could not later disown the resignation.
Inherent Tensions
- —The tension between an employer's internal procedural lapse (an unauthorised officer accepting a resignation) and an employee's own conduct in fully acting upon and benefiting from that same resignation.
- —The tension between the general right of an employee to withdraw a resignation before it takes effect and specific statutory or regulatory provisions that can curtail or condition that right.
- —The tension between two different High Courts reaching different outcomes on related facts, and the need for the Supreme Court to reconcile the underlying legal principles across both.