Legislature May Cure Defect If Court Holds Executive’s Action To Be Bad; It Won’t Amount To Overreaching Judgment: Supreme Court

The appeals before the Supreme Court were filed against the judgment of the Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The appellant sought to discredit the portion of the impugned order that adversely affected their interests.

On the aspect of interpretation of a statute, the Division Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Augustine George Masih held, “Apart from the settled propositions of law noticed above, it is equally well-known that if a judgment of a Court holds a particular action of the executive to be bad and illegal because such action suffers from certain procedural defect(s), the legislature/executive, as the case may be, by an amendment in the law/rules, may cure the defect on which the judicial order was premised and such curing would not amount to overreaching the judgment of the Court.”

“The third proposition of law that is well-settled is that though the legislature has no power to sit over the judgment of a Court or usurp judicial power, but, subject to the competence to make law, it has the power to remove the basis which led to the Court’s decision”, it added.

AOR Aditya Soni represented the Appellant, while Advocate I. S. Dhaliwal represented the Respondent.

Factual Background

The appellants are Assistant Professors employed by the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, since 2008 in different disciplines. They aspired for appointment to the immediate higher post of ‘Associate Professor’. Since the appellants did not qualify the eligibility criteria of having an Academic Grade Pay of Rs 8,000 for at least three years at the level of Assistant Professor in terms of the relevant recruitment rules, they were ineligible to enter the zone of consideration for selection. In 2017, a letter was issued by the Department of Higher Education, whereby it was decided to grant one-time relaxation to those Assistant Professors who did not have Academic Grade Pay of Rs 8,000.

An advertisement was issued in the year 2018 by the NIT, Kurukshetra. In pursuance thereof, the appellants offered their candidature. It was the case of the appellants that they were selected and were awaiting appointment as Associate Professors. Meanwhile, writ proceedings were initiated before the High Court by a certain section of Assistant Professors, junior to the appellants as far as length of service was concerned. A Division Bench of the High Court held that the letter issued in the year 2017 was contrary to the First Statutes of the NIT and hence no benefit of the instruction contained in such letter could enure to the benefit of any Assistant Professor employed in the NIT, Kurukshetra. The SLP against this order came to be dismissed.

Certain amendments came to be made in the statutes of the NIT, Kurukshetra as per the decision of the Council of the National Institutes of Technology, Science, Education and Research. In the writ petitions before the High Court, a challenge was laid to the amendments that were incorporated in the First Statutes through the 2023 Statutes concerning Statute 9. The writ petitioners contended that there was no occasion to issue the notification, which was done only to overturn the judgment of the Court upheld by the Supreme Court, and the same amounted to overreaching the process of the Courts.

Reasoning

The Bench referred to the judgment in RBI v. Peerless General Finance & Investment Co. Ltd. (1987) and affirmed that a holistic understanding is the first in terms of whereof the statute has to be read as a whole instead of focusing on isolated parts. Secondly, the emphasis is on contextual understanding, requiring the circumstances and objectives which triggered the statute’s enactment to be taken into account. Thirdly, the statute has to be interpreted in a manner that advances its intended purpose and objectives.

On a perusal of the statute, the Bench noted that having regard to the specific language employed in Statute 9, it couldnot be gainsaid that the same had the effect of clarifying/explaining that the recruitment drive initiated by the NIT, Kurukshetra immediately after issuance of the letter of 2017, which granted a one-time relaxation for its stagnating Assistant Professors, stood validated with effect from June 30, 2023. As per the Bench, the amendment incorporated in the First Statutes by introducing Statute 9 was clarificatory in nature to extend benefits to the Assistant Professors of the NIT, Kurukshetra retrospectively, at par with the Assistant Professors of all the other NITs in the country, based on the purpose which the instruction contained in the letter of 2017 sought to achieve.

The Bench stated that such purpose was intended to give a one-time relaxation through amendment of the relevant statutes in the wake of the previous judgment and order of the Division Bench of the High Court, which had interdicted specifically on the ground that a statute was sought to be supplanted, and not supplemented, by an executive instruction: an exercise impermissible in law.

“Such a clarification/explanation given by Statute 9, for a limited purpose, was well-nigh permissible and had to be read as part of the First Statutes. The impugned order, therefore, nullified the purpose for which Statute 9 was introduced and proceeded to extend benefits even to those Assistant Professors who might not have been qualified even to participate in the process in terms of the advertisement bearing no.03/2018 and thereby placing unequals and equals at par”, it added.

The Bench directed the appellants as well as the intervenors who might have qualified in the selection process pursuant to the recruitment drive initiated vide the advertisement of 2018 and were recommended for the appointment to the post of Associate Professor on November 27, 2018, shall be considered for such appointment by the Board of Governors of the NIT, Kurukshetra and upon being found suitable, they could be offered notional appointment with effect from any date post November 27, 2018, as the Board may decide.

“...the appellants shall be treated as Associate Professors from the dates of their notional appointment for the purpose of continuity in services to receive terminal benefits”, it ordered while also directing, “The Board of Governors of NIT, Kurukshetra is directed to take an appropriate decision in terms of this order within a period of a month from date.”

Cause Title: Ritu Garg v. Board of Governors Bog (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 1285)

Appearance

Appellant: AOR Aditya Soni, Senior Advocate Gaurav Agarwal, Advocate Rohan Thawani, AOR Pooja Dhar, Advocate Aakriti Vikas

Respondent: Advocate I. S. Dhaliwal, AOR Aditya Soni, Advocate Rajat Gautam, AOR Sanjai Kumar Pathak, Advocates Shashi Pathak, Arvind Kumar Tripathi, Ruhi Sultana, Smriti Singh, Abhijay Negi, Snigdha Tiwari, Dilraj Singh Bhinder,AOR Sujoy Chatterjee, ASG S. D. Sanjay, Advocates Annirudh Sharma-ii, Advocates Ishaan Sharma, Seema Bengani, Yash Tyagi, AOR Sudarshan Lamba, Advocates Navroop Jawanda, Divyam Aggarwal, AOR Pooja Dhar, AOR John Mathew, AOR Shantanu Krishna, Advocates Ankit Mishra, Vaishnavi Srivastava

Click here to read/download Judgment