Post-Retirement Promotions: Senior-Junior Parity in Service Law

Naavya Dixit and Anushka Khadse^*

For promotions, seniority and length of service are fundamental principles.[1] Sometimes, however, departmental lethargy could allow a junior to steal a march over his senior. E.g., imagine a case where an employee, despite being eligible for promotion for an extended period, experiences repeated departmental delays until he reaches his age of retirement. To add salt to the injury, shortly thereafter, the Department awards promotions to his juniors who are still in service. The central question that then arises is whether such retired employee can claim notional promotion for himself. The answer is that it depends, and in this piece, we highlight important judgments which tell us what it depends on.

Is Retrospective Notional Promotion permissible in law?

The Supreme Court, as early as 1998, in Baij Nath Sharma observed that the appellant therein would have a grievance if any of his juniors had been promoted with effect to a date prior to the superannuation of the appellant. The same was also observed by the Delhi High Court in Rajendra Roy (2007). Building further upon this observation, the Delhi High Court in R.N. Malhotra (2012) expressly stated that while a retired officer cannot be granted notional promotion from a date prior to the convening of the relevant Departmental Promotion Committee (“DPC”), there does exist a sole exception to the same i.e., a junior being promoted from a date prior to the superannuation of the retired employee. Therefore, it is well-settled that the general rule has only one exception. The question that then arises is whether the courts in India have consistently ruled in consonance with this settled principle in this regard.

One of the most heavily relied upon judgements while granting the relief of notional promotion to a superannuated employee was passed by the Principal Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal in P.G. George (2010). The Tribunal in this case dealt with the precise issue of whether a retired employee would be entitled to notional promotion retrospectively if the DPC meeting holding him eligible was convened after his retirement and where such DPC meeting promoted his juniors retrospectively from a date prior to his retirement. In view of the rulings in Baij Nath Sharma and Rajendra Roy, it was held that it would be logically inconsistent to grant the benefit of retrospective promotion to serving employees while denying such benefit to retired ones as it would lead to a situation where retired employees would suffer at the hands of departmental delays in preparing Select Lists. The Tribunal, thus, granted the relief to the retired employee/appellant, stating that the notional promotion would be taken into consideration for increments and recalculation of post-retirement dues, which was later upheld by the Delhi High Court (2010). The rulings of both the Tribunal and the High Court were followed in multiple judgements, including Jagdish Lal Jokhani (2010), S. Narayanaswamy (2012), Baljit Kaur (2022), Bhagwan Singh (2023) and Bishan Dass (2023).

Technical distinctions rejected

Another recent judgement that follows the trail of the aforementioned rulings is that of the Delhi High Court in V.P. Kathuria (2024). In this case, the respondents argued that the principle laid down in P.G. George applies only in cases where there is a deliberate delay in convening the DPC. The counsel further sought to draw a distinction between an employee who had superannuated and an employee who had voluntarily resigned, arguing that the latter was not eligible for such notional promotion. However, the Court rejected both these arguments, stating that no such distinction can be drawn as the fundamental condition of the employee being in service on the date from which the juniors have been granted promotion still stands satisfied.

The Tribunal’s Bangalore Bench further went a step ahead in the case of Rakesh Ranjan (2021) wherein it asserted that the above principle would not change merely because the benefits given to juniors emanated from judicial orders. The Tribunal held that equality of treatment is not contingent on who approaches the court first. The Applicant’s claim had been rejected by the Indian Defence Accounts Service on the ground that the arrears of pay and allowances made to his immediate juniors were in light of specific court directions. However, the Tribunal, drawing from the Doctrine of Parity and Article 14 of the Constitution of India, observed that when juniors have been granted retrospective promotion with arrears based on judicial directions, seniors identically placed cannot be denied the same benefit as similarly situated persons shall be given the benefits akin to the ones given by the court regardless of whether such persons approached the court or not. Therefore, the Tribunal affirmed the right to notional promotion if the person is found fit for promotion for the relevant assessment year.

Summary

The rulings of courts and tribunals across the hierarchy are consistent: While the general rule does not permit retrospective promotion, the same shall be granted only when a junior has been promoted from a date prior to the end of an employee’s tenure, whether by means of retirement or voluntary resignation. This right also extends to the persons similarly placed regardless of them approaching the courts. Therefore, the law, as it stands, entitles an aggrieved employee in such a situation to claim the benefits of increments and post-retirement dues on account of notional promotion.

This post is authored by Naavya Dixit and Anushka Khadse who interned at Pravah Law in May 2025. Naavya is a fourth-year student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal while Anushka is a fifth-year student at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur.

[1] E.g., see Supreme Court rulings in A.N. Pathak,  A. Janardhana, O.P. Singla, and G.S. Lamba.