Adverse Record Limited to 1977–1995: Allahabad HC Grants Selection Grade on Ten Unblemished Years After 1995
A Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court set aside a writ court order and directed the U.P. Board to grant selection grade to a clerk on ten years of clean service rendered between 1 July 1995 and 30 June 2005.
A long-running service dispute concerning a clerk with the Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad Uttar Pradesh finally reached resolution before a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court on 31 July 2026. Justice Indrajeet Shukla, writing for the bench alongside Justice Ajit Kumar, found that the writ court had overlooked a material fact: the adverse entry against the appellant operated only until 30 June 1995, leaving ten years of unblemished service from 1 July 1995 to 30 June 2005 entirely unaccounted for. On the basis of those ten years, the bench directed the State-respondent to accord the selection grade and requisite financial upgradation in accordance with the relevant Government orders. The appeal — Special Appeal No. 650 of 2012 — was filed against the dismissal of Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 6984 of 2012 by the single judge on 8 February 2012.
A Clerk, Two Criminal Trials, and Decades of Litigation
Vidyadhar Shukla was appointed as a Routine Grade Clerk in the office of the Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad Uttar Pradesh, Allahabad, on 14 June 1969. He was charged under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC on allegations of manipulating mark sheets. Two separate criminal cases followed: Criminal Case No. 4/1981 and Criminal Case No. 635/1987. Both ended in acquittal — on 18 May 1984 and 1 June 1994 respectively — and those judgments of acquittal attained finality without challenge.
In parallel, Shukla had remained absent from duty for the period 27 December 1977 to 28 July 1981. He attributed the absence to mental trauma. On production of a medical certificate, he was permitted to resume duties from 1981. His subsequent claims for salary during the absence period and for promotion were rejected. He then pursued successive writ petitions before the High Court.
The departmental enquiry ran alongside the criminal proceedings. It concluded with a serious warning and an adverse entry recorded in Shukla’s character roll covering his work, conduct and performance for the period 1977 to 1994–95. By order dated 4 December 2004, the Board’s Additional Secretary (Administration) regularised the period of absence as extraordinary leave without pay for the purposes of pension. The same order stated that all other service-related admissible benefits would be governed by the rules in the light of that decision.
The 2004 Board Order and Its Unchallenged Finality
The order dated 4 December 2004 was passed pursuant to a direction issued by this Court on 16 July 2004 in Writ Petition No. 18773/2000, which directed the Board to consider Shukla’s claim for selection grade and promotional pay scale and pass a reasoned, speaking order within three months.
The Board considered the matter and refused the claim. The refusal rested on the finding that Shukla’s work and conduct had not been satisfactory, and that satisfactory service is a pre-requisite for the grant of selection grade and promotional pay scale.
Critically, Shukla did not challenge the order dated 4 December 2004. He instead filed a fresh writ petition — Writ Petition No. 76756 of 2005 — without impugning the 2004 order. That writ petition was disposed of on 18 May 2009, with a direction to the Secretary of the U.P. Board to reconsider the claim for promotional grade and selection grade and pass a speaking order within three months, taking into account both the court’s earlier directions and the order dated 4 December 2004.
In compliance, the Board’s Secretary passed an order on 30 November 2009, again refusing the selection grade and promotional pay scale, on the ground that the conditions set out in the order dated 4 December 2004 were not met. Shukla challenged that order in Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 6984 of 2012, which was dismissed by the single judge on 8 February 2012. That dismissal led to the present intra-court appeal.
The Appellant’s Argument and Why the Bench Rejected Most of It
Before the Division Bench, counsel for Shukla pressed two contentions. First, that despite the survival of the 2004 order, the High Court’s subsequent direction in 2009 to reconsider the claim implied that the 2004 order was not an absolute bar. Second, that the adverse entries had never been formally communicated to Shukla.
The bench rejected both. On the first argument, it held that the 2009 direction did not mandate the Board to ignore the 2004 order — that order remained intact for want of any challenge. On the second argument, the bench found the contention to be “prima facie, fallacious on the face of the record” since Shukla had himself referred to the 2004 order while filing Writ Petition No. 76756 of 2005, and counsel had conceded before the Division Bench that the order dated 4 December 2004 had not been challenged.
Having disposed of both contentions, the bench observed that no relief for selection grade from 1982 or 1992 could be granted while the 2004 order stood unchallenged. At that stage, however, Shukla’s counsel advanced a modified prayer: that the court calculate 10 years of satisfactory service from 1 July 1995 — the date on which the adverse period ended — to 30 June 2005, the date of superannuation, and grant the selection grade on that basis.
The Moulded Relief: Ten Years of Clean Service from 1995
The Division Bench accepted this modified prayer. It relied on its power, in an intra-court appeal, to mould the relief even if the precise relief originally prayed for cannot be granted. Citing the Supreme Court’s judgment in Baddula Lakshmaiah and Others v. Sri Anjaneya Swami Temple and Others, (1996) 3 SCC 52, the bench confirmed that the powers of the Division Bench in a special appeal are coextensive with those of the single judge deciding the writ petition.
The bench then set out the relevant Government orders governing selection grade. Government Order dated 9 May 1984 provides that for posts mentioned in Annexure-I thereof, selection grade is admissible after completing 10 years of regular service. Government Order dated 8 March 1995 prescribes a personal promotional pay scale upon completion of a total of 14 years of satisfactory service, inclusive of 6 years of satisfactory service from the date of grant of the selection grade. Government Order dated 2 December 2000 similarly conditions the first personal promotional pay scale on completion of 14 years of continuous satisfactory service, inclusive of 6 years from the date of the selection grade increment.
Government Order dated 5 November 2014 goes further: where an employee receives a financial upgradation with delay on account of non-completion of satisfactory service, that delay carries forward and affects the qualifying period for all subsequent upgradations. The bench noted that this Government Order was not directly applicable since Shukla had already superannuated in 2005, but recorded it as reflecting consistent State practice.
Applying these orders to the facts, the bench found: the adverse entry covered 1977 to 1994–95, meaning the period of unsatisfactory conduct ended on 30 June 1995. From 1 July 1995 to 30 June 2005, Shukla rendered ten years of unblemished service. His increment and selection grade having become due on 1 July 2005 — the day after superannuation — the bench invoked the Supreme Court’s judgment in The Director (Administration and HR) KPTCL v. C.P. Mundinamani, (2023) 14 SCC 411.
In that case, the Supreme Court held that an employee who has earned an annual increment is entitled to it even if he retires on the very day preceding the date the increment becomes payable. The court reasoned that the day following the date on which an increment is earned serves only to confirm completion of a year’s service with good conduct; where a servant retiring on 30 June has already completed that year satisfactorily, denying the increment on the ground that he was not in employment on 1 July would be arbitrary and contrary to Article 14 of the Constitution.
The bench held that the completion of ten years of unblemished service from 1 July 1995 to 30 June 2005 had gone entirely unnoticed by the writ court, and that this oversight was the error that crept into the order dated 8 February 2012.
Order
The Division Bench set aside the order dated 8 February 2012 passed by the writ court in Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 6984 of 2012. It extended to Shukla the moulded relief of selection grade and requisite financial upgradation, to be computed treating the ten years of service from 1 July 1995 to 30 June 2005 as qualifying service, in accordance with the relevant Government orders and as and when due.
The State-respondent was directed to undertake the necessary exercise and pass appropriate orders within four weeks of the production of a certified copy of the judgment. The writ petition and the intra-court appeal were both disposed of. No order as to costs was made.