In Brief
This case concerns the seniority of Assistant Engineers appointed on ad hoc basis in 1985 and regularized in 1989 in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The Court held that services rendered on ad hoc basis prior to regularization cannot be counted for determining seniority. Seniority must be reckoned from the date of regularization (14 December 1989), not from the initial ad hoc appointment. The Court found the earlier judgment in Narendra Kumar Tripathi was per incuriam as it overlooked binding precedent interpreting the same regularization rules. The Court restored the original 2001 seniority list and quashed the 2016 revised list that had counted ad hoc service periods.
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