Twenty years of teaching on eleven-month contracts: Andhra Pradesh High Court orders regularisation from the date of first appointment

Justice Balaji Medamalli holds that the label attached to an engagement cannot decide a regularisation claim where the duties are perennial and discharged against a sanctioned vacancy.

A teacher with a doctorate in biochemistry was selected by a duly constituted selection committee in 2006 and appointed against a sanctioned vacancy, to continue until the post was filled regularly. It never was. Two recruitment drives were announced and both were cancelled. When she asked in 2021 to be absorbed, the university's answer was to put her on a fresh eleven-month contract as a part-time teaching associate on an hourly basis. The Andhra Pradesh High Court has now directed that she be regularised as an Assistant Professor from the date of her initial appointment, within three months.

The service the record shows

The petitioner holds a B.Sc., an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in biochemistry. She was selected in 2006 through a duly constituted selection committee and appointed as a part-time teacher against a sanctioned vacancy, the engagement to continue until the post was filled on a regular basis.

What followed, on her case, was continuous service in a different character from the label. Though designated part-time, her services were used as those of a full-time teacher, and from 2011 she worked as a Teaching Associate without break, against the sanctioned vacancy, drawing the consolidated remuneration applicable to Teaching Associates. She continued in that capacity until 2020. Recruitment processes were initiated in 2018 and in 2021 and both were cancelled, although she had qualified in the 2018 written examination for food chemistry.

In June 2021 she sought absorption into regular service on the strength of her long engagement. The response, by a memo of August 2021, was to apply an eleven-month engagement condition to her despite service since 2006, and then to appoint her as a part-time Teaching Associate on a fresh eleven-month contract. She objected to the change in status and kept working on the strength of oral assurances from the college.

In 2022 came a series of memos alleging negligence, disobedience and administrative inconvenience. She submitted explanations and asked for the relevant documents, which were not given to her. On her case no effective enquiry was held; her remuneration was withheld and she was prevented from performing her duties. No written order of termination was ever issued — she was told orally that her services had ended. Walk-in-interview notifications then treated the post as part-time again and were, she said, structured in a way that affected her eligibility. She attended the interview held in December 2022 and no decision was ever communicated to her.

The writ petition challenged that chain of proceedings as illegal and arbitrary, and sought regularisation in the equivalent post of Assistant Professor from the date of her initial appointment in 2006, together with full-time Teaching Associate pay for the intervening period.

Two features of that narrative are worth separating from the regularisation question, because they would matter even if she had no claim to a permanent post. The first is the eleven-month term itself. An engagement capped just short of a year, renewed over and over, is the standard device for keeping a long-serving employee outside the benefits that attach to continuous service; here it was applied for the first time in 2021, to someone who had by then been teaching for fifteen years, and applied immediately after she asked to be absorbed. The second is the manner of her removal. Memos alleging negligence and disobedience were issued, the documents she asked for to answer them were withheld, no effective enquiry followed, her remuneration stopped, and she was told orally that her services were over. There is no written termination order on this record at all — which is why the petition had to be framed against a series of memos rather than against a dismissal.

The university's answer: Umadevi and Daya Lal

The State and the university met the claim with the two decisions that have defeated most regularisation petitions for twenty years.

From State of Karnataka v. Umadevi they relied on the passage holding that a person engaged on a temporary, casual or contractual basis cannot invoke legitimate expectation to be confirmed in a post that can be filled only by a proper selection procedure; that the State cannot constitutionally promise such a person continuance or permanence; and that the doctrine cannot be used to seek the positive relief of being made permanent. Her appointment, they said, was purely temporary, her selection was not through a regular recruitment process, and a backdoor entry cannot be regularised.

From State of Rajasthan v. Daya Lal they relied on the summarised principles: that a writ court will not direct regularisation unless the employee was appointed through regular recruitment in an open competitive process against sanctioned vacant posts; that continuation under cover of interim orders is “litigious employment” and confers no right; that long temporary or daily-wage service does not entitle an employee to regularisation if he is not working against a sanctioned post; that sympathy and sentiment cannot substitute for a legal right; and — the proposition aimed squarely at this petitioner — that part-time employees are not entitled to seek regularisation because they do not work against any sanctioned post, and cannot claim parity in salary with regular employees.

Why the label did not decide it

The Court's answer was that the recent Supreme Court decisions have changed how those principles are applied, and it took its reasoning from Jaggo v. Union of India.

Jaggo holds that Umadevi was not intended to penalise employees who have rendered long years of service fulfilling ongoing and necessary functions of the State or its instrumentalities. What that judgment set out to prevent was backdoor entry and illegal appointments that circumvent constitutional requirements. Where appointments were not illegal but possibly irregular, and the employees served continuously against the backdrop of sanctioned functions for a considerable period, a fair and humane resolution becomes paramount. Prolonged, continuous and unblemished service performing tasks inherently required on a regular basis can, over time, transform what was initially ad hoc or temporary into a situation demanding fair regularisation.

Jaggo in turn draws on Vinod Kumar v. Union of India, where it was held that procedural formalities cannot be used to deny regularisation to an employee whose appointment was termed temporary but who has performed the same duties as a regular employee over a considerable period — and that reliance on procedural formalities at the outset cannot perpetually deny substantive rights accrued through continuous service.

Applying that, Justice Medamalli set out the test he was using. The nature of the engagement and the actual duties discharged have to be considered; merely describing an appointment as temporary, ad hoc or contractual does not by itself conclude the issue. Where the duties performed are perennial and continuous in nature, are essential to the functioning of the institution, and are discharged against a sanctioned vacancy, the employee cannot be denied consideration for regularisation solely on the basis of the nomenclature attached to the appointment.

He added the model-employer principle. The relationship between the State or its instrumentalities and an individual employee cannot be viewed merely in terms of the formal conditions of the contract; the State is required to act fairly and reasonably. A description of an appointment as temporary, ad hoc or contractual cannot by itself defeat a regularisation claim where the employee has continuously discharged perennial and indispensable duties against a sanctioned post, subject to the applicable rules.

Order

On the facts the Court found that the petitioner had been continuously discharging the duties of a Teaching Associate, stated to be equivalent to those of an Assistant Professor, against a sanctioned vacancy. Having regard to the nature and duration of her service, the duties continuously discharged and the circumstances of her engagement, she was held entitled to consideration for regularisation in accordance with law; and as she was still in service, entitled to remuneration on par with Teaching Associates at the prevailing rate.

The writ petition was allowed. The respondents were directed to regularise her services in the post of Assistant Professor — which the order treats as equivalent to Teaching Associate — in the fourth respondent college, from the date of her initial appointment, within three months of receipt of the order. Earlier interim orders stood vacated and pending miscellaneous petitions were closed. The judgment is marked speaking, reasoned and reportable.

The operative words that will be litigated are “from the date of her initial appointment”. A direction to consider someone for regularisation prospectively is a common outcome; a direction to regularise with effect from 2006 is a different order of relief, because seniority, pay fixation and pensionary benefits all run from that date. The judgment does not spell out the consequential financial entitlements beyond parity of remuneration going forward, which leaves the university to work them out or to contest them.

The wider significance is in how the two lines of authority were reconciled. The university's case was textually strong: Daya Lal says in terms that part-time employees cannot be regularised because they do not hold sanctioned posts. The Court's route around it was to look behind the designation — the petitioner was selected by a committee, placed against a sanctioned vacancy, told she would continue until it was filled regularly, and then used as a full-time teacher for years while the recruitment that would have filled the post was announced twice and abandoned twice. On that record the part-time label described the paperwork rather than the work, and the reasoning in Jaggo supplied the answer: an engagement that the institution itself treated as permanent in substance cannot be kept temporary in name indefinitely.