The Supreme Court held that Tehsildars promoted to Deputy Collector on an ad hoc, 'stop-gap' basis in 2007 were entitled to count that entire ad hoc service toward seniority once regularized, ruling that the State's own five-year failure to refer their continuing appointment to the Public Service Commission for approval — a directory, not mandatory, requirement — could not be used to deny them the benefit of their actual service.
"I was working as a Tehsildar when the State, facing a severe shortage of officers, promoted me and several colleagues to Deputy Collector on what they called a 'stop-gap' basis in 2007, because going through the full, formal selection process would have taken too long. I did the job, fully and continuously, for nearly five years, until I was finally, formally regularized in 2012. Now I'm fighting to have that entire five years count toward my seniority — the way the rules say it should — but the government and the direct recruits who came in later are arguing that because the State itself never bothered to check in with the Public Service Commission during those years, as it was technically supposed to, my years of real, continuous service somehow shouldn't count at all. I did exactly what was asked of me. Why should someone else's paperwork failure cost me my seniority?"
Moral Universe
The promotees frame themselves as dedicated public servants who stepped up during a genuine staffing crisis, performed the job faithfully for years, and are now being penalized for a bureaucratic oversight entirely within the State's own control, not theirs.
Emotional Driver
Frustration at watching years of real, continuous, hard-earned service potentially erased on a technicality — the State's own failure to complete an internal consultation requirement they had no power to compel or monitor.
Objective
To have their entire period of ad hoc service, from initial promotion in 2007 to formal regularization in 2012, counted toward their seniority as Deputy Collectors.
Blind Spots
The promotees' straightforward framing (that their genuine service should simply count) doesn't need to grapple deeply with the more technical, contested question the case turned on — whether they were actually promoted within their allotted promotion quota, a factual dispute the Supreme Court itself had to carefully resolve by tracing specific vacancy figures across multiple years of government correspondence.
Inherent Tensions
- —The promotees' straightforward claim to service credit for work actually performed versus the State's and direct recruits' technical argument about missing Commission consultation
- —The State's own multi-year failure to complete a required internal procedural step versus its later attempt to use that very failure to deny the promotees a benefit
- —The direct recruits' interest in preserving their own relative seniority versus the promotees' claim to backdated seniority reflecting their actual years of service
- —A genuinely disputed factual question (how many promotion-quota vacancies actually existed in 2007-2008) versus the High Court's decision to simply punt that question back to the State Government rather than resolve it