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Supreme Court: Seniority Cannot Be Granted to Employees Promoted Before Their Cadre Appointment

In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court of India ruled that employees promoted to a particular cadre cannot claim seniority benefits from a date prior to their appointment in that cadre. This ruling came in the case titled Mhabemo Ovung & Ors. vs. M. Moanungba & Ors., where the Court overturned a Division Bench decision of the Nagaland High Court.


The dispute centered around the seniority list published by the Nagaland Government for Junior Engineers. Two sets of Junior Engineers were involved: one recruited directly on May 1, 2003, and the other promoted from Selection Grade-I employees on October 11, 2007. The seniority list placed the directly recruited engineers above those promoted, leading the promoted engineers to challenge the list in the High Court.


A Single Judge initially upheld the seniority list, but the Division Bench later reversed this decision, granting the promoted engineers seniority from a date prior to their promotion, which was contested by the directly recruited engineers before the Supreme Court.


The Supreme Court bench, comprising Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Rajesh Bindal, ruled that the Division Bench erred in granting seniority to the promoted engineers from a date when they were not even part of the cadre. The Court emphasized that since direct recruitment was introduced for the first time in 2003, the promoted engineers could not claim seniority parity with those directly recruited.


The Court also dismissed the relevance of the historical background concerning the upgrade of certain posts to Junior Engineers before 2003, stating that the dispute only arose after the dual modes of recruitment were established. The Division Bench's order was set aside, and the original seniority list upheld, with the appeals being allowed.


The judgment reinforces the principle that seniority cannot be backdated to a time when the employee was not part of the relevant cadre, maintaining fairness in the promotion and seniority process within government services.







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