No Vested Right To Promotion Under Repealed Rules When Policy Change Is Fair And Reasonable: Supreme Court
The Bench said that officiating BSNL employees cannot claim promotion under old Rajbhasha Adhikari Recruitment Rules merely because vacancies arose before the 2005 Rules came into force.
The Supreme Court has held that an employee does not acquire a vested right to be considered for promotion under repealed service rules merely because the vacancy arose before the rules were amended, provided the Government's policy decision to introduce the new rules is fair, reasonable and consistent with Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
Reversing concurrent findings of the Kerala High Court, the Court clarified that officiating employees seeking promotion to the post of Rajbhasha Adhikari (formerly Assistant Director, Official Language) in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) could not bypass the written examination prescribed under the 2005 Recruitment Rules, since their case was squarely governed by the earlier three-judge distinction drawn between merely officiating employees and those who had secured a provisional promotion with an accrued statutory entitlement.
A Bench of Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan reiterating State of Himachal Pradesh and Others v. Raj Kumar and Others (2023) 3 SCC 773 observed, “There is no rule of universal application that vacancies must be necessarily filled on the basis of the law which existed on the date when they arose…The Government is entitled to take a conscious policy decision not to fill up the vacancies arising prior to the amendment of the rules. The employee does not acquire any vested right for being considered for promotion in accordance with the repealed rules in view of the policy decision taken by the Government. There is no obligation for the Government to make appointments as per the old rules in the event of restructuring. The only requirement is that the policy decisions of the Government must be fair and reasonable and must be justified on the touchstone of Article 14 of the Constitution of India”.
Advocate Piyush Sharma appeared for the appellants and Archana Pathak Dave, ASG appeared for the respondent.
The private respondents were appointed as Hindi Translators in various grades within the Department of Telecommunications. An administrative order dated April 28, 1994 provided for automatic promotion to the post of Hindi Officer on completion of prescribed years of service, but the respondents were never extended this benefit.
The Assistant Director (Official Language) Recruitment Rules, 2002 were subsequently framed, mandating that all 120 existing vacancies be filled by promoting eligible Hindi Translators; however, these Rules were never brought into operation. Thereafter, the 2005 Rules renamed the post as 'Rajbhasha Adhikari' and introduced a written test as the mode of promotion.
The respondents challenged the 2005 Rules before the Kerala High Court, contending they were entitled to promotion under the rules existing prior to 2005. The Single Judge Bench allowed the writ petitions, directing consideration of their promotion without reference to the prescribed test, a view affirmed by the Division Bench. BSNL approached the Supreme Court.
The Court distinguished between Mishri Lal (2011), where employees working purely on an officiating basis were held to possess no vested right to promotion, and Medini C. (2022), where employees had been provisionally promoted and had thereby crystallised rights under the 2002 Rules. Since the respondents herein were admittedly officiating and never regularly or provisionally promoted, their case fell within Mishri Lal.
Cause Title: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Another v. G.N. Mani Ravinder and Others Etc., (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 1007)
Appearances:
Appellants: Piyush Sharma, Advocate.
Respondent: Archana Pathak Dave, ASG, G. Arudhra Rao, Advocate.