Dr. Akash Dua & Ors. vs New Delhi Municipal Council

Hon’ble Mr. Rajveer Singh Verma, Member (J) : The applicants were appointed as Dental Specialists on a contractual basis on 10.10.2014 following an open and competitive advertisement dated 11.09.2014 and a selection process against regular sanctioned posts, initially for a period of six months. They continued to render uninterrupted service without any break. Through various resolutions, specifically Resolution 10(H-03) dated 20.06.2014, the respondents granted them full pay parity, annual increments, and allowances akin to regular doctors, establishing that their service was substantive for all practical purposes. Their contracts were subsequently extended for long-term block periods of five years in 2015 and 2020. Following the notification of the Recruitment Regulations via a Gazette Notification on 20.05.2022, the applicants were assessed and found fit for regular appointment by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in October 2022. The respondents explicitly recognized the significance of their past service by according them pay protection and completely waiving their probation period via an order dated 31.03.2023, later granting them financial upgradation under the Dynamic Assured Career Progression scheme (DACP) on 09.08.2024. However, the applicants were denied the benefits from the date of initial appointment resulting in discrimination. Therefore, the applicants have filed the present OA seeking the following relief(s) :-

Learned Senior Counsel for the applicants submitted that from the very inception of their appointment, the applicants discharged exactly the same functions and responsibilities as regular Dental Specialists. They worked against sanctioned vacancies, performed identical duties, discharged similar responsibilities and were subjected to the same administrative control as regular doctors. Their appointments were neither backdoor entries nor dehors the applicable recruitment norms. Rather, they fulfilled all prescribed qualifications and were selected through an open recruitment process after due assessment of merit. The ^{nomenclature of their appointments as contractual or ad-}Central Administrative Tribunal hoc was merely technical and did not alter the substantive nature of the appointment.

He further submitted that the respondent itself consistently treated the applicants at par with regular doctors in several material respects. Pursuant to various resolutions adopted in the years 2001 and 2007 and subsequently by Resolution No. 10(H-03) dated 20.06.2014, the respondent extended to contractual and ad-hoc specialists several benefits available to regular doctors including the maternity benefits. The same Resolution also resolved to regularize the services of contractual and ad-hoc doctors, thereby acknowledging that such doctors formed an integral part of the regular establishment. These actions unmistakably demonstrate that the respondent itself considered the applicants' service to be substantially equivalent to regular service.

Learned Senior Counsel for the applicants further submitted that the Recruitment Regulations dated 20.05.2022 are liable to be read down to the limited extent that they fail to recognize the continuous service rendered by officers already working against the posts before notification of the Rules. The Department of Personnel and Training, through its Frequently Asked Questions issued vide OM No. AB.14017/13/2013-Estt. (RR), has specifically clarified that whenever a new service is constituted and Recruitment Rules are framed for the first time, a suitable Initial Constitution clause should be incorporated so as to count the regular service already rendered by existing officers before the notification of the Rules. The impugned Regulations fail to incorporate this settled administrative principle despite the applicants having continuously served against sanctioned posts for several years prior to the notification of the Recruitment Regulations. Consequently, the denial of the benefit of past service solely because of the respondent's delay in framing Recruitment Rules is wholly unjust, arbitrary and contrary to the policy of the Government of India.

The applicants had submitted a detailed representation dated 11.11.2024 requesting grant of seniority and all consequential service benefits from the date of their initial appointment. The said representation was ultimately rejected on 06.02.2025 by relying upon a communication of the Ministry of Home Affairs without appreciating the settled legal principles governing continuous service and seniority.

It is contended that restricting their seniority and service benefits to the date of notification of the regulations instead of their initial appointment date is arbitrary and discriminatory, violating Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.

The applicants have also submitted written synopsis in addition to the pleadings in the OA. In support of his contentions, the learned Senior Counsel for the applicants heavily relied upon the landmark judgments of the Hon'ble Supreme Court and subordinate Courts in the cases of Direct Recruit Class II Engineering Officers Association versus State of Maharashtra (1990) 2 SCC 715, PPC Rawani versus Union of India & Ors. (1992) 1 SCC 331, Siraj Ahmad versus State of Uttar Pradesh (2020) 19 SCC 480, Anita Patnaik Vs. NDMC CW 721/2001, Pawan Sharma & Ors. GNCTD & Ors. WP(C) No.2117/2025 and Sports Authority of India & Anr. Vs Dr. Kulbir Singh Rana (Civil Appeal No.2296-2298 of 2025) which mandate that continuous officiating service rendered after a regular selection process must be counted toward seniority. They also highlighted that the Department of Personnel and Training OM regarding recruitment rules explicitly states that an initial constitution clause should count long-term ^{service rendered before the notification of rules.}Central Administrative Tribunal

On the other hand, learned counsel for the respondents submitted that the applicants were explicitly appointed on a contractual basis for a limited tenure, and their initial engagement letters clearly specified that such appointments would not confer any right to regular absorption, seniority, or promotion within the cadre. The benefits, increments, and long-term extensions granted under Resolution 10(H-03) were purely welfare and administrative measures to ensure the smooth functioning of medical services, and the resolution itself specifically guarded against any claim for seniority or regular status based on such contract service. The service of the applicants was regularized from the date of regular appointment i.e. 20.05.2022 and they are not entitled to get seniority from the year from which they were engaged on contract basis as it will also impact the rights of regularly appointed employees. Moreover, the offer letter itself mentioned that the appointments will be subject to condition that they will not be given benefit of past service. The representation of the applicants was rightly rejected in accordance with the Ministry of Home Affairs directive letter dated 13.03.2023.

In rejoinder, the learned Senior Counsel for the applicants submitted that the initial appointment of the applicants was not a backdoor entry but was conducted through a proper public advertisement and evaluation of merit by a selection committee against sanctioned posts. The respondents cannot treat the continuous service of nearly eight years as a mere stop-gap arrangement, especially when they themselves recognized the applicants as assets, granted regular increments, protected their pay, and completely waived their probation based on the length of past service. The delay in framing and notifying the recruitment regulations from 2014 until 2022 was an administrative failure on the part of the respondents, and the applicants cannot be penalized for this institutional delay by losing nearly eight years of qualifying service. The restrictive clauses in the Gazette Notification dated 20.05.2022 fail to extend the legal fiction of regularization to its logical conclusion, creating an internal contradiction where past service is recognized for pay protection and career progression under the DACP scheme but ignored for seniority. The principles settled in the Direct Recruit (supra) case clearly establish that when an employee continues uninterruptedly until regularization, the officiating service cannot be excluded, and any directive from the ^{Ministry of Home Affairs cannot override the constitutional}Central Administrative Tribunal guarantees of fairness and equity under Article 14. Therefore, the applicants reiterate their prayer for counting their services from the initial date of joining.

We have heard learned Senior Counsel for the applicants and learned counsel for the respondents at length, perused the record including the written synopsis filed by the applicants, and considered the judgments cited at the Bar.

The core question that falls for our determination is a narrow one: whether the applicants, admittedly appointed as Dental Specialists on 10.10.2014 pursuant to an open, competitive selection process against regular sanctioned posts, and who have rendered continuous and unblemished service thereafter, are entitled to have their seniority, pay fixation and continuity of service reckoned from the date of their initial appointment, or whether, as the respondents contend, such benefit can only run from 20.05.2022, the date of the Gazette Notification under which they came to be regularized.

Learned counsel for the respondents places reliance on three distinct instruments: (a) the terms of the applicants' engagement/offer letters, which state that the appointment confers no right to regular absorption, seniority or promotion; (b) Resolution No. 10(H-03) dated 20.06.2014, which, while extending pay parity and other benefits to contractual/ad-hoc doctors, is said to expressly guard against any consequential claim to seniority or regular status; and (c) the communication of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 13.03.2023, on the strength of which the applicants' representation dated 11.11.2024 was rejected. We examine each in turn, since none of them, in our view, can defeat the applicants' claim.

As regards the engagement letters, it is well settled that there can be no estoppel against a statute, and equally no waiver of a right that flows from Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. An employee's acceptance, at the threshold of an eight-year career, of a printed clause disclaiming seniority cannot operate to extinguish a substantive right that the law subsequently recognises as having accrued through continuous, unblemished service against sanctioned posts. If it were otherwise, every contractual appointment could be insulated from judicial scrutiny merely by the insertion of a standard-form exclusion clause, which is precisely the device that Vinod Kumar v. Union of India, (2024) 9 SCC 327, Jaggo v. Union of India, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3826 and the decisions following them caution Supreme Court's repeated instruction to look beyond "surface labels" to the "realities of employment" would be rendered meaningless if a contractual recital were treated as the last word.

As regards Resolution 10(H-03), we are unable to read its protective clause in isolation from the respondents' own subsequent conduct. A resolution that in the same breath extends full pay parity, annual increments and allowances "akin to regular doctors" cannot be construed, at the respondents' own instance, as also foreclosing the logical corollary of that parity, namely, recognition of the underlying service for seniority. More importantly, the respondents did not stop at the 2014 resolution: by order dated 31.03.2023 they waived the applicants' entire probation period, and on 09.08.2024 they extended DACP financial upgradation calculated with reference to the applicants' length of service. Each of these subsequent acts is inconsistent with treating the applicants' appointment as contractual in substance, whatever the 2014 resolution may have reserved in form. We are entitled to, and do, treat this consistent course of conduct as evidence that the respondents themselves have, over time, treated the applicants' service as equivalent to ^regularCentral Administrative Tribunal ^{service, which is the precise factual predicate on} which Kulbir Singh Rana (supra) and New Delhi Municipal Council v. Kalpana Sharma, W.P.(C) 4646/2026 & 4649/2026, decided 13.04.2026 proceeded.

As regards the Ministry of Home Affairs communication dated 13.03.2023, this is an administrative instrument, not a judicial pronouncement, and cannot be elevated above binding precedent. Under Article 141, the law declared by the Hon‟ble Supreme Court is binding on all courts within the territory of India, and under Article 144, all authorities, civil and judicial, are required to act in aid of that law. An administrative directive that runs contrary to a settled line of Hon‟ble Supreme Court authority, here the Vinod Kumar/Jaggo line, as applied by the Delhi High Court against these very respondents in Kalpana Sharma, cannot furnish a lawful basis for rejecting a representation grounded in that authority. To hold otherwise would permit an executive circular to override this Tribunal's obligation to apply binding precedent, which cannot be countenanced.

We record, for completeness, the respondents' further submission that granting the applicants seniority from 10.10.2014 would prejudice the rights of employees who entered the cadre through direct recruitment after 20.05.2022. We do not consider this concern well founded on the facts of the present case. The relief we grant does not require the re-opening, revision or displacement of any existing seniority position of a direct recruit; it only requires that the applicants, who were themselves selected through an open, competitive process against sanctioned vacancies and who continued without interruption until regularisation, be placed in the seniority list at the position their own continuous service would justify, consistent with the "Initial Constituent" principle recognised in Kulbir Singh Rana (supra). This is materially different from the kind of retrospective seniority claim that courts have been cautious to entertain where it would unsettle the legitimate expectations of persons appointed strictly by direct recruitment in the interregnum.

Direct Recruit Class II Engineering Officers' Association v. State of Maharashtra, (1990) 2 SCC 715, remains the foundational authority. The Constitution Bench held, as one of its eleven propositions on seniority, that where the initial appointment is not made strictly in accordance with the rules but the incumbent continues in the post uninterruptedly until regularisation, the officiating ^{service must be counted towards seniority. That proposition}Central Administrative Tribunal applies on all fours to the facts before us: the applicants' initial appointment, though labelled contractual, followed an open advertisement and a competitive selection process against sanctioned vacancies, and they have continued without a break since 10.10.2014.

We are conscious that Dr. P.P.C. Rawani v. Union of India, (1992) 1 SCC 331, calls for a more circumspect treatment than the other authorities cited by the applicants.

Rawani (supra) arose out of a petition under Article 32 by a batch of doctors in the Central Government Health Scheme who had been engaged on an ad hoc basis over an extended period, and who sought parity in seniority with doctors directly recruited through the Union Public Service Commission. The Hon‟ble Supreme Court, exercising its jurisdiction under Article 32, moulded relief that granted the ad hoc doctors certain seniority-related benefits while taking care not to displace or prejudice the direct UPSC recruits already in position, a balancing exercise specific to the historical recruitment anomaly then before it in the CGHS.

The difficulty with treating Rawani (supra) as a proposition of general law is twofold. First, the relief was fashioned in the exercise of the Court's extraordinary equitable jurisdiction under Article 32 to redress a particular, closed set of facts, rather than arrived at through an exposition of general service-law principles meant to apply to future, differently-situated cases. Second, and consequently, later decisions considering Rawani have held that its directions must be read as confined to the peculiar facts of that batch of CGHS doctors, and that the case does not constitute "law declared" within the meaning of Article 141 which other similarly placed employees can invoke as of right. In other words, Rawani settled a dispute; it did not lay down a rule.

That said, we do not think Rawani is without value to the applicants' case, even if it cannot be cited as a binding precedent. It remains a data point, from the same broad domain of government medical/health services, in which the Hon‟ble Supreme Court was prepared to extend seniority-related relief to long-serving ad hoc doctors without disturbing the position of directly recruited personnel, precisely the kind of accommodation the applicants seek here through the "Initial Constituent"-style relief discussed below. We, therefore, treat it as lending collateral, persuasive support to the equity of the applicants' claim, while expressly declining to rest any part of our operative conclusion on Rawani standing alone.

In Siraj Ahmad v. State of U.P., (2020) 19 SCC 480, the Hon‟ble Supreme Court drew a distinction that is dispositive here: a stop-gap appointment made without considering the claims of all eligible candidates cannot be equated with regular service, but where the appointment follows due consideration of all eligible candidates and the appointee continues uninterrupted until regularisation, there is no reason to exclude the officiating service for seniority. The applicants' case falls squarely within the second limb of that distinction, and not the first.

The applicants' reliance on Sports Authority of India & Anr. v. Dr. Kulbir Singh Rana, Civil Appeal Nos. 2296-2298/2025, decided 04.03.2025, is also apposite. There, the Hon‟ble Supreme Court affirmed that employees engaged on contract, but selected through a due process, are entitled to be treated as "Initial Constituents" under a newly framed Recruitment Rules containing such a clause, since their appointment was irregular and not illegal, and that once so treated, they cease to be contractual employees and stand at par with regular employees for all practical purposes. While the Recruitment Regulations dated 20.05.2022 impugned in the present OA do not, unlike the Rules considered in Kulbir Singh Rana, contain an express Initial Constitution clause, the applicants are correct that this omission cannot be treated as a deliberate exclusion where the record shows the respondents' own repeated recognition, through pay parity, probation waiver and DACP upgradation, that the applicants' service was equivalent to regular service in substance.

What tilts the scales decisively, however, is a line of authority that has emerged after the filing of this OA and that neither party has had full occasion to address, but which we are duty-bound to apply under Article 141 and Article 144 of the Constitution. In Vinod Kumar v. Union of India, (2024) 9 SCC 327, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi (2006) 4 SCC 1, was explained as intended only to prevent illegal, backdoor appointments, and not to penalise employees whose appointments were merely irregular and who have rendered long, unblemished service performing essential functions. This position has been consistently reiterated in Jaggo v. Union of India, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3826, Shripal v. Nagar Nigam, Ghaziabad, 2025 SCC ^{OnLine SC 221}Central Administrative Tribunal^{, Dharam Singh v. State of U.P., 2025 SCC} OnLine SC 1735, Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 129, and Pawan Kumar v. Union of India, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 200: seven consistent decisions of the Hon'ble Supreme Court, as noted by the Delhi High Court itself.

Most significantly, in New Delhi Municipal Council v. Kalpana Sharma, W.P.(C) 4646/2026 & 4649/2026, decided 13.04.2026, the very respondents before us unsuccessfully resisted an identical claim by Pharmacists and ANMs engaged on repeatedly renewed contracts after open selection against sanctioned posts. The Hon‟ble Delhi High Court, applying the above line of authority and its own decision in Pawan Sharma v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi, 2025 SCC OnLine Del 8313, rejected NDMC's contention that the employees should await the finalisation of Recruitment Rules by the UPSC (the same argument raised before us regarding the framing of the 2022 Regulations) and modified the relief to direct that the employees be regularized prospectively, without back wages, but with the benefit of pay fixation, seniority and continuity of service counted from the date of their initial appointment. The Special Leave Petitions carried by NDMC against that judgment (SLP(C) ^{Nos. 23044/2026 and 23444/2026) were dismissed by the}Central Administrative Tribunal Hon'ble Supreme Court on 15.07.2026, rendering the Hon‟ble Delhi High Court's judgment final as between the parties. While a non-speaking dismissal of a Special Leave Petition does not attract the doctrine of merger under Article 141 (Kunhayammed v. State of Kerala, (2000) 6 SCC 359), the Hon‟ble High Court's reasoning stands undisturbed and constitutes a direct, considered pronouncement of the jurisdictional High Court against the very respondents before us, on materially indistinguishable facts. We are unable to see why a different view should be taken in the case of Dental Specialists similarly placed.

On facts, we find that: (a) the applicants' initial appointment was made pursuant to an open, competitive advertisement and a due selection process against regular sanctioned posts, and was accordingly, at worst, irregular and not illegal; (b) the applicants have rendered continuous, uninterrupted and unblemished service since 10.10.2014, performing duties indistinguishable from those of regular Dental Specialists; and (c) the respondents' own conduct, namely extending pay parity and allowances under Resolution 10(H-03), waiving the applicants' probation period in entirety by order dated 31.03.2023, and granting ^{DACP financial upgradation on 09.08.2024, is inconsistent}Central Administrative Tribunal with treating the applicants' engagement as a mere stop-gap arrangement, and is consistent only with an acknowledgment that their service was substantively equivalent to regular service throughout.

We are accordingly unable to accept the respondents' contention that the terms of the offer letters, or Resolution 10(H-03), can operate to defeat a right that flows directly from binding judicial precedent; nor can the communication of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 13.03.2023, an administrative instrument, be treated as overriding the constitutional guarantee under Articles 14 and 16 as authoritatively explained in the decisions discussed above. The rejection of the applicants' representation dated 11.11.2024, by order dated 06.02.2025, solely by reference to that communication, cannot be sustained.

For the reasons above, Clauses 5 and 9 of the Gazette Notification dated 20.05.2022 are read down to the extent that they fail to count the applicants' continuous service rendered prior to the notification of the Recruitment Regulations.

In the result, and following the relief moulded by the ^{Hon‟ble Delhi High Court in}Central Administrative Tribunal ^{New Delhi Municipal Council} v. Kalpana Sharma (supra), we direct as follows:

The applicants‟ seniority in the cadre of Dental Specialists shall be reckoned from the date of their initial appointment i.e. 10.10.2014, subject to adjustment for the pay protection and increments already extended by order dated 31.03.2023 and the DACP upgradation already granted on 09.08.2024.

The regularization of the applicants shall operate prospectively with effect from 20.05.2022;

The applicants shall not be entitled to any arrears of pay or back wages for the period of their contractual/ad-hoc engagement prior thereto.

The respondents shall prepare and issue a revised seniority list of Dental Specialists reflecting the above within eight weeks from the date of receipt of a certified copy of this order.

The order dated 06.02.2025 rejecting the applicants' representation dated 11.11.2024 is set aside.

The competent authority among the respondents shall file a compliance affidavit before this Tribunal within Central Administrative Tribunal^{twelve weeks from the date of receipt of a certified copy} of this order.

The Original Application is allowed in the above terms. There shall be no order as to costs.