Promotion Eligibility To Be Counted From Calendar Year Of Joining Feeder Cadre, Not Actual Joining Date: Chhattisgarh High Court
The Chhattisgarh High Court has held that qualifying service for promotion is to be counted from the calendar year in which an employee joins the feeder cadre, and not from the actual date of joining. The Court observed that when the statutory provision itself specifically provides the calendar year as the reference for counting, the actual date of joining cannot be made the basis for postponing the eligibility for promotion.
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal was hearing an intra-Court appeal filed by four Sub Inspectors (Radio), who had been appointed in October 2017 and joined their respective posts in November 2017. Under the Chhattisgarh Police Executive (Non-Gazetted) Service Recruitment Rules, 2021, eight years of service on the feeder post of Sub Inspector (Radio) is prescribed for promotion to Inspector (Radio).
The appellants contended that the Explanation to Rule 6(2) of the Chhattisgarh Public Services (Promotion) Rules, 2003 requires qualifying service to be computed from the calendar year in which an employee joined the feeder cadre and not from the actual date of joining. Since they joined the feeder cadre in 2017, they claimed to have completed the requisite eight years of qualifying service in the year 2024 and to have become eligible for consideration for promotion as on January 1, 2025.
The State opposed the appeal, submitting that since the Appellants' actual dates of joining were between November 4 and November 13, 2017, they had completed only about seven years and one month of service as on the relevant date.
The Court noted that Rule 6(2) of the 2003 Rules provides that only public servants who have completed the prescribed qualifying service in their feeder cadre are to be considered for promotion. The Explanation specifically provides that the period of qualifying service as on January 1 of the relevant year shall be counted from the calendar year in which the public servant joined the feeder cadre and not from the date of joining.
Accordingly, the Court held:
“… the rule-making authority has consciously prescribed the calendar year of joining as the starting point for computation of qualifying service and has specifically excluded the actual date of joining as the basis for such computation. Therefore, once the appellants had joined the feeder cadre in the year 2017, the entire calendar year 2017 is liable to be reckoned as the first year of qualifying service.”
The Court accordingly computed 2017 as the first year, and as a consequence, 2024 as the eighth year of qualifying service. Hence, the Court held that the appellants had completed the prescribed eight years as on January 1, 2025.
The Court held that the Single Judge had erred by proceeding on the basis of the actual dates of joining and holding that the appellants would complete eight years only in October 2025.
“When the statutory provision itself specifically provides that the qualifying service is to be counted from the calendar year in which the employee joined the feeder cadre and not from the date of joining, the actual dates of joining of the appellants in November, 2017 cannot be made the basis for postponing their eligibility,” the Court remarked.
The Court therefore set aside the Single Judge's order and directed the respondents to consider the appellants for promotion to Inspector (Radio).
Case Title: Om Prakash Dewangan & Ors. v. State of Chhattisgarh & Ors. [WA No. 944 of 2025]