The Supreme Court has ruled that offering contractual appointments through a recruitment process meant for permanent posts is “patently illegal and unconstitutional” if the employer fails to explain why one candidate was treated differently from others selected through the same process.
A Bench of Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice S. V. N. Bhatti delivered the verdict while deciding the appeal of an Assistant Professor who had been denied a regular appointment at Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad despite applying under an advertisement issued exclusively for permanent faculty positions.
The Court directed the institute to appoint him as a regular Assistant Professor within four weeks. It also granted continuity of service, though no monetary benefits were ordered for the intervening years.
The dispute traces back to a 2013 recruitment notification issued by the institute for regular teaching posts under Pay Band-III and Pay Band-IV categories. The appellant, Lokendra Kumar Tiwari, had applied for the post of Assistant Professor in the Information Security/MSCLIS discipline.
His academic record included a PhD in Information Security from the University of Allahabad, along with a first-division master’s degree in Cyber Law and Information Security from IIIT-Allahabad, where he secured a CGPA of 9.02 out of 10. He had also worked as a teacher at Ewing Christian College and served as guest faculty at the institute itself.
After interviews conducted in March 2013, the Selection Committee recommended 13 candidates for regular appointments. However, Tiwari and another candidate were offered only contractual positions for one year at a fixed monthly salary of ₹40,000.
The matter took a more complicated turn when all appointments were cancelled in 2014, sparking litigation before the Allahabad High Court. Although earlier court proceedings led to reconsideration of the recruitment exercise, the institute again chose to offer Tiwari merely a contractual role in 2017.
His challenge before both the Single Judge and the Division Bench failed largely because he had accepted the contractual appointment and continued working under those terms. The dispute eventually reached the Supreme Court.
Writing the judgment, Justice Bhatti clarified that the case was not about regularising a contractual employee after years of service. Instead, the real issue was whether an institution could conduct recruitment for permanent vacancies and then selectively hand out contractual appointments without justification.
The Bench found that the institute had failed to place any reason on record explaining why the appellant alone was denied a regular appointment despite possessing the required qualifications and participating in the same selection process as other successful candidates.
According to the Court, such unequal treatment violated Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution, which guarantee equality and fairness in public employment.
The judgment noted that once the recruitment process was initiated for regular appointments, all candidates called for interviews were entitled to uniform treatment. The Selection Committee, the Court observed, had deviated from that principle without any disclosed rationale.
With those findings, the appeal was allowed and the earlier orders were set aside.
