In Brief
Clerks appointed on an ad hoc basis in 1975-76 and later regularized with effect 1 April 1977 sought seniority credit from their date of initial ad hoc appointment. The Supreme Court held that ad hoc service cannot count towards seniority when initial appointment was not made according to regular procedural rules. While the prior Malook Singh judgment bound those parties to it by res judicata, it did not extend to third-party recruits. The Court affirmed that the regularization policy clearly specified seniority from 1 April 1977 only. However, after all appellants and respondents retired decades later following promotions granted during proceedings, the Court protected their existing pensions and barred recoveries under Article 142, avoiding the administrative burden of recalculating decades-old seniority records."
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