The Allahabad High Court has held that an administrative order directing payment of salary confers no enforceable right to salary from the State exchequer, even where it was never challenged or set aside, if the approval order on which the appointment rests is later found to be forged.

It held that the finality attaching to an administrative order is distinct from the legality of the foundation on which a monetary claim against the exchequer is built.

Justice Manju Rani Chauhan held,

“Finality cannot be invoked to perpetuate an entitlement founded upon a document which, upon subsequent examination of the original record pursuant to an order of this Court, has been found to be forged. An administrative order cannot validate what the statute does not authorise, nor can it create a sanctioned post where none existed.”

The petitioner was appointed as an Assistant Teacher in CT-Grade on 01.07.1977 by the Committee of Management of a recognized and aided Junior High School in District Sant Kabir Nagar, his selection being approved by the District Basic Education Officer on 29.07.1982. When the institution came within the grant-in-aid scheme from 01.03.1991, the Manager's Return omitted his name, and the order dated 21.06.1997 directing payment of salary from the State exchequer under Section 10 of the Uttar Pradesh Junior High School (Payment of Salaries of Teachers and Other Employees) Act, 1978 left him out.

His representations going undecided, the petitioner approached the High Court in 1998 and secured a direction for their disposal. The District Basic Education Officer then summoned the service records and, satisfied with the claim, passed an order dated 09.03.2000 directing payment of salary from 01.03.1991. The Finance and Accounts Officer declined to sanction the bill, saying he had not been consulted and that approval already stood granted for fifteen persons against fourteen sanctioned posts.

A second writ petition was disposed of on 25.02.2014 with a direction to the Director of Education (Basic) to decide the claim by a reasoned order after hearing the petitioner; that exercise ended in the impugned order dated 02.06.2015.

The petitioner argued that teachers junior to him, covered by the same approval order, had drawn salary from the State exchequer throughout, in breach of Article 14 of the Constitution. The impugned order was internally inconsistent, he submitted, in acknowledging the dispatch register entry for the approval order while rejecting his claim because the records themselves were untraceable. He also urged that the order dated 09.03.2000 had never been set aside and had attained finality.

The State contended that no post had ever been created or sanctioned in the institution, as the Manager himself recorded in his letter dated 01.04.2015, and that the approval order dated 29.07.1982 was forged and fabricated. It was never produced before the Director and survived only as a dispatch register entry.

It was argued that the approval order purported to approve thirteen Assistant Teachers and three Peons when only three Peon posts were then permissible; and three Peons and nine Assistant Teachers were approved afresh by a later order dated 30.12.1987 on actual working strength. The petitioner's name figured in neither the working-strength statement dated 11.10.2010 nor the inspection report dated 07.03.2011, and the Manager's letter recorded that he had worked only up to 2005.

The Court held that the case involved not a collateral deficiency in an otherwise lawful appointment but the failure of its very foundation, and that once the foundational document was found to be forged, the superstructure erected upon it could not acquire validity by lapse of time, actual working or receipt of emoluments.

It referred to R. Vishwanatha Pillai v. State of Kerala, Union of India v. M. Bhaskaran, Avtar Singh v. Union of India and State of Bihar v. Devendra Sharma, observing that an appointment procured by fraud or forged documents is void from its inception. It held that the right to salary and service benefits is consequential upon a valid appointment, and continuance in service creates no equity or estoppel against the employer.

“Salary from the State Exchequer is not a bounty flowing from actual occupation of a seat; it is a statutory consequence of a lawful appointment to a duly sanctioned post.”

On the submission founded upon finality, the Court held that the order dated 09.03.2000 had not been preceded by any examination of the records relating to creation of the post or the genuineness of the approval dated 29.07.1982, nor by consultation with the Finance and Accounts Officer, and could not be elevated to a judicial determination validating the appointment. The Director's later inquiry, it held, was not an impermissible review of an order that had attained finality, but the reconsideration the High Court had itself directed.

“Finality prevents an administrative order from being casually ignored or reopened at will; it does not, however, create a sanctioned post where none is established, authenticate a document subsequently found to be forged, or preclude an authority from undertaking an inquiry which this Court itself has expressly directed.”

Further, the Court held that the petitioner's name was absent from the return prepared when the institution entered the grant-in-aid regime, that the Manager had stated he ceased working after 2005, and nothing had been produced to show he continued thereafter against a sanctioned post.

Finding no perversity, jurisdictional error, breach of natural justice or manifest illegality in the impugned order, the Court dismissed the writ petition.