“Long-Settled Service Rights”: J&K&L High Court Grants Pensionary Relief To Officers Litigating Since 1986 Over Seniority

The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has held that repeated attempts by the Government and Police Headquarters to reframe and revise seniority lists decades later amounted to administrative patchwork and could not be used to deny long-standing service rights of officers who had been litigating since 1986.

A Division Bench comprising Justice Rajnesh Oswal and Justice Rahul Bharti observed that the exercise undertaken in 2019 and 2020 to revisit the seniority of Dy. Superintendents of Police and Superintendents of Police, originally settled around the year 2000, reflected a self-created administrative mess and could not justify continued injustice to the appellants.

While declining to undo the entire seniority exercise carried out in 2019–2020 due to the passage of time and institutional developments, the Court held that the fourteen appellants could not be left remediless after nearly four decades of litigation, during which their juniors had gained promotions and service benefits ahead of them.

The Court noted that the appellants had accepted and acted upon Government Order No. Home-597(P) of 2008 dated 04.09.2008 read with Government Order No. Home-508(P) of 2010 dated 29.04.2010, which restored their seniority and promotional status from the rank of Sub-Inspector onwards. The Bench held that equity demanded that their service status continue to be governed by those orders.

The High Court further emphasized parity with similarly situated officers, observing that juniors such as Abdul Gaffar Malik had received accelerated service benefits earlier, despite being lower in seniority than the appellants.

Accordingly, the Court modified the Single Bench judgment and directed that the fourteen appellants shall be entitled to full service benefits based on their revised seniority under the 2008 and 2010 Government Orders till their respective dates of retirement. While pecuniary benefits up to superannuation were directed to be notional, the appellants were held entitled to actual monetary benefits for pensionary and retiral purposes.

The relief was expressly confined to the fourteen appellants and not extended to other co-petitioners who had not challenged the earlier judgment. The respondents were directed to implement the judgment within 60 days, failing which they would be held accountable. The connected contempt proceedings were also dropped.

Case-Title: Pyare Lal Bhat and others vs State of J&K & Ors, 2025

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