The Supreme Court held that Rule 23(1) of the Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019 — which suspends benefits while a family member faces a murder or abetment charge in the death of the Government employee — applies by its plain text and marginal heading only to 'compassionate financial assistance' and has no application to 'compassionate appointment', a structurally distinct relief under the same Rules. Rule 23(1) is constitutionally valid within its own domain, but the State erred in invoking it to defer an appointment claim. The Court upheld the provision under Article 14, flagged the resulting anomaly for legislative cure, and directed the appellant's claim be decided within three months, uninfluenced by Rule 23(1).
The Supreme Court analytically split a public recruitment into three stages — advertisement, selection by interview, and the formal appointment decision — and held that the absence of statutorily mandated official members from the appointing Board's meeting under amended Rule 3 did not vitiate an otherwise fair and transparent recruitment; the defect was curable by reconvening a properly constituted Board, not fatal, especially where the appointees bore no responsibility and had served over a decade.
The Supreme Court held that the substituted Section 59(d) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 — which made the Commissioner the disciplinary authority for all municipal officers from 01.10.1993 — did not relate back to the Act's original commencement, and that the phrase 'subject to any regulation that may be made in this behalf' points only to regulations framed after the amendment, not the pre-existing 1959 Regulations.
In 2023, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Kerala High Court could not impose a viva-voce cut-off after the selection process had run. The judgment grounds substantive legitimate expectation in Article 14 and sets out when such an expectation arises and when public interest may defeat it.
On 9 June 2026 the Supreme Court held that a member of the Central Armed Police Forces, including the BSF, may invoke the Delhi High Court's writ jurisdiction under Article 226(1) in a service matter on the strength of the situs of the Union of India and the force headquarters in Delhi, notwithstanding that the cause of action arose outside that High Court's territory. The doctrine of forum non conveniens, the Court held, will rarely apply where a constitutional remedy is pursued under clause (1) of Article 226.
The Supreme Court held that long-serving casual labourers granted temporary status under the 1991 Scheme are entitled to pension on superannuation even without a formal regularisation order. Pension, the Court reiterated, is a deferred wage, not employer grace. The Patna High Court was reversed and the CAT's orders restored.
The Supreme Court partly allowed an electricity-company clerk's appeal, holding that once a defective departmental inquiry is set aside and misconduct is later proved on fresh evidence, the disciplinary authority cannot mechanically fall back on the old, pre-remand show-cause notice and reimpose dismissal — it must independently apply its mind to the quantum of punishment. A digest of the facts, the holding on proportionality and natural justice, and what it means for service-law practice.
In 1974 a five-judge Constitution Bench dismissed E.P. Royappa's challenge to his transfer, yet Justice Bhagwati's opinion reshaped Indian equality law by holding that equality and arbitrariness are sworn enemies. A digest of the facts, the new arbitrariness test under Articles 14 and 16, and the doctrine's later trajectory.
On 1 November 1995, a three-judge Bench restated the limited scope of judicial review of departmental discipline — review of the manner of decision, not an appeal on merits — and confined interference with the quantum of punishment to penalties that shock the conscience of the court.
On 31 March 2005, a two-judge bench restated the contours of natural justice — its flexibility, the primacy of audi alteram partem, the governing role of prejudice, and the capacity of a post-decisional hearing to cure a deficient pre-decisional one.
On 2 May 1990, a five-judge Constitution Bench distilled the law of seniority into eleven propositions — holding that seniority counts from the date of appointment according to rule, not confirmation, and that continuous officiation till regularisation counts towards seniority.
On 17 December 1982, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that pension is a right earned by past service — a deferred wage, not a bounty — and struck down a retirement cut-off date that split a homogeneous class of pensioners as arbitrary under Article 14.
On 4 September 1990, a Constitution Bench of five judges struck down a 'hire and fire' clause permitting termination of permanent employees without reasons and without hearing — holding that audi alteram partem must be read into State termination powers and that arbitrary, unguided dismissal violates Article 14.
On 1 October 1993, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that a delinquent employee is entitled to a copy of the inquiry officer's report before the disciplinary authority decides — but tempered the remedy with a prejudice test, making non-supply void only where the employee shows prejudice.
On 19 December 2008, the Supreme Court held that a departmental enquiry finding cannot rest on the inquiry officer's ipse dixit, surmise or conjecture — that suspicion is never a substitute for legal proof, and that disciplinary orders carrying civil consequences must be supported by recorded reasons.
Valkya Editorial··8 min
High CourtHigh Court of Himachal Pradesh at Shimla
The Himachal Pradesh High Court held that a married daughter cannot be excluded from the deceased's 'family' for compassionate appointment solely on the ground of her marital status — such exclusion is arbitrary and violates Articles 14 and 15.
On 19 October 1962, a five-judge Constitution Bench laid the foundation of the 'some evidence' rule in service discipline — holding that a High Court will not upset a departmental penalty supportable on a surviving finding of substantial misconduct, even if another finding is defective.
On 26 November 2025, the Karnataka High Court at Dharwad held that the Civil Rights Enforcement Cell has no power to investigate the validity of a caste certificate suo motu — its jurisdiction arises only on a reference from the District Caste Verification Committee.
On 11 July 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the second proviso to Article 311(2) — the three situations in which a civil servant may be dismissed without the constitutional inquiry — while holding the recorded satisfaction reviewable by courts for relevance and bona fides.
On 15 April 2026, a two-judge bench inverted the conventional reading of the discharge–acquittal hierarchy, holding that a criminal-court discharge stands on a better footing than an acquittal and that disciplinary action on the same facts is barred once the armed forces have elected section 124 prosecution before a criminal court.
On 28 April 2026, a Madras HC Division Bench struck down Tamil Nadu G.O. Ms. No. 18 of 13 March 2026 restricting maternity leave for a third pregnancy to 12 weeks, operationalising K. Umadevi (2025) and anchoring maternity benefit as a facet of Article 21 reproductive autonomy.
On 11 March 2026, a two-judge bench held that creamy-layer status under the DoPT 1993 Office Memorandum cannot be determined solely on parental income; the status-based and income-based gates must be applied as distinct, and the DoPT clarificatory letter of 14 October 2004 was held ultra vires the substantive 1993 OM framework.
On 28 August 1981, a three-judge Bench led by Fazal Ali J. struck down the first-pregnancy termination clause and the Managing Director's uncontrolled retirement-extension discretion in the Air India and Indian Airlines service regulations, while upholding the differential retirement age and four-year marriage-bar for female cabin crew on cadre-classification reasoning. A digest of the mixed ruling, the sex-plus doctrine it installed, the feminist critique that followed, and the modern anti-stereotype frame in Anuj Garg, Babita Puniya and Joseph Shine that has substantially overtaken its weaker holdings.
On 20 January 1999 — the first Supreme Court application of Vishaka — Chief Justice Anand, writing for a two-judge Bench, restored the disciplinary dismissal of a Private Secretary at the Apparel Export Promotion Council that the Delhi High Court had reduced. The judgment held that sexual harassment includes any unwelcome sexually-determined conduct and does not require physical contact; that unwelcomeness is judged from the victim's perspective; and that writ-court review of disciplinary action in sexual-harassment cases is narrowly confined to procedural fairness and proportionality. A digest of the holding, the CEDAW-anchored reasoning, and the line that runs from Vishaka through Chopra into Section 2(n) of the POSH Act 2013.
On 12 May 2023, a two-judge Bench of Bopanna and Hima Kohli JJ. set aside the Goa University disciplinary inquiry against its former vice-chancellor for procedural defects in the Internal Complaints Committee and, more consequentially, issued nationwide directions to State Legal Services Authorities, the National Judicial Academy and statutory regulators for ICC capacity-building, compliance audits and training. A digest of the holding, the structural reasons the 2013 POSH Act needed a second judicial push ten years on, and the compliance architecture the directions installed.
Calcutta HC cancels the entire 2016 WBSSC panel of ~25,753 appointments where OMR manipulation made tainted and untainted inseparable; Supreme Court upheld it.
The Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling on the conjunctive 'or' in *Rule 69(1)(c)* of the CCS (Pension) Rules 1972. A 2-judge bench held that the embargo on the release of gratuity operates for the entire duration during which either departmental or judicial proceedings remain pending against a retired employee — and the embargo persists until both sets of proceedings conclude. Exoneration in the departmental proceeding does not lift the bar where a criminal trial on the same allegations remains pending. The doctrinal line draws a sharp separation from *Jaswant Singh Gill v. Bharat Coking Coal* (2007) on the *Payment of Gratuity Act 1972* and is to be read alongside *Kadir Khan Ahmed Khan Pathan v. MSWC* (2026 INSC 16) as a 2026 SC pair on the post-retirement disciplinary architecture.
On 17 February 2020, a two-judge Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi held that the Ministry of Defence policy denying Short Service Commission women officers Permanent Commission in non-combat arms of the Indian Army — Army Service Corps, Ordnance Corps, EME, Signals, Intelligence Corps, AEC, JAG and the other streams in which women had been inducted as SSC officers — violates Articles 14, 15 and 16. The Court rejected the Centre's submissions about 'physiological limitations', 'domestic obligations' and unit cohesion as constitutionally impermissible gender stereotypes, set aside the 'staff appointments only' restriction in the 25 February 2019 policy letter, and directed that all serving SSC women officers be considered for Permanent Commission on terms equivalent to male officers with consequential entitlements. *Babita Puniya* installed the anti-stereotype framework that *Annie Nagaraja* (Navy) and *Lt Col Nitisha* (indirect discrimination) elaborated, and that *Lt Col Pooja Pal* (2026) operationalised through Article 142 structural compensatory relief.
The May–June 2026 cycle in Indian service and employment law has produced the most operationally consequential clutch of developments since the four Labour Codes were notified on 21 November 2025. The *Social Security (Central) Rules 2026* — notified on 8 May 2026 — operationalise the Chapter IX gig-and-platform-worker framework with the first enforceable monetary obligation on aggregators. The *MoLE* additional FAQs on the Codes supply working compliance guidance — including a standardised 50%-of-CTC wages definition. *Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand* refines the *Umadevi* regularisation discipline through the model-employer doctrine. *Avinash Kumar v. UoI* polices deemed-abandonment clauses. *Virinder Pal Singh v. Punjab and Sind Bank* settles the continuing-post-retirement-disciplinary question. *Rupesh Kumar Meena v. UoI* preserves the finality of selection. *Balaji Madhukar Konkanwar* rejects estoppel on structural-inequality grounds. The Supreme Court strikes down the three-month adoption-age cap on maternity leave under the *Code on Social Security 2020*. The dismissal-versus-compulsory-retirement dichotomy under *Article 311(2)* is given operational content. Read together, the cycle resets the working architecture in which Indian service-and-employment practice now runs.
On 10 April 2006, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Sabharwal CJ and authored by Balasubramanyan J held that public employment must follow Article 16 — competitive, advertised, merit-based recruitment to sanctioned posts — and that temporary, casual, daily-wage, ad hoc or contractual appointees made outside that scheme acquire no fundamental right to regularisation however long they may have served. The judgment drew a sharp doctrinal line between 'irregular' and 'illegal' appointments, granted a one-time, fixed-date paragraph-53 exception for irregular appointees who had completed ten years of service on sanctioned posts as of 10 April 2006, and overruled *Dharwad PWD*, *Daily Rated Casual Labour v. Union of India* and *Ashwani Kumar v. State of Bihar*. The decision remains the gravitational centre of Indian regularisation jurisprudence two decades on.
The Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling that the right to dearness allowance, once incorporated into a state's statutory pay rules through a specific AICPI-linked mechanism, becomes a legally enforceable right that the executive cannot displace by memorandum — regardless of the state's financial constraints. Financial inability is not a defence to a statutory pay mechanism; executive economic policy cannot derogate from a statutory pay framework. The reasoning consolidates the doctrinal line that statutory pay mechanisms in public employment have the force of law, not the malleability of executive instruction.
On 21 February 1975, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that statutory corporations created by Acts of Parliament — ONGC, LIC and IFCI in the consolidated appeals — are 'authorities' within Article 12, that regulations framed by such corporations under their enabling statutes have the force of law and bind both employer and employee as more than mere contract, and that public-sector dismissals made in breach of those statutory regulations are void, entitling the employee to reinstatement. Justice K.K. Mathew's concurring opinion laid the foundations of the 'instrumentality of State' doctrine that was elaborated in *R.D. Shetty* (1979) and *Ajay Hasia* (1981), and refined by the 7-judge Bench in *Pradeep Kumar Biswas* (2002). *Sukhdev Singh* remains the backbone of Indian public-employment jurisprudence.
On 7 November 2024, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that recruitment criteria — the 'rules of the game' — cannot be altered after the selection process has begun, unless the rules so permit.
The Supreme Court's foundational decision on the doctrinal limits of compassionate appointment in public employment. A 2-judge bench held that compassionate appointment is not a constitutional or fundamental right but a narrow exception to the *Article 16* rule, designed to provide immediate financial relief to the family of a deceased employee — not to bestow the deceased's post as an 'heirloom' on his progeny. The judgment installed the junior-most-post discipline, the financial-condition examination, the reasonable-time requirement, and a clear limit on judicial direction outside the rules. Thirty years on, the *Sawant J* framework remains the operative anchor of compassionate-appointment jurisprudence, read together with *Canara Bank v. M. Mahesh Kumar* (2015), *Canara Bank v. Ajithkumar G.K.* (2025), and the post-*Umadevi* (2006) regularisation discipline.
On 11 March 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi held in M. Thanigivelu v. Tamil Nadu Electricity Board that training is part of the service for the purposes of seniority — and that an administrative Board Proceeding cannot retrospectively re-date the seniority of direct recruits to align them with promotees. The judgment restates a longstanding service-jurisprudence principle in the language of the TNEB Service Regulations and clarifies the limits on the State employer's discretion to reorder service hierarchies through administrative instruments.