Wait-listed engineers lost the seniority fight in December and lost the review in October
Justices Kishore C. Sant and Abasaheb D. Shinde dismissed review applications by junior engineers appointed from a wait list, holding that a seniority grievance already answered cannot be reargued as an error on the face of the record.
In 2016 the Maharashtra government advertised 1,256 junior engineer posts in its Water Conservation Department. Engineers who were appointed from the wait list about eight months after the first batch argued that their higher marks should place them above some of the earlier appointees. In December 2025 the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court decided against them. They sought a review of that judgment, and the same Bench has now dismissed it, holding that the review raised the arguments it had already decided.
How the batches came about
The advertisement of 15 February 2016 was for Junior Engineer (Civil), Group B (Non-Gazetted), posts in the department. The vacancies were later reduced to 1,202, and a select list including a waiting list was published. Appointment orders went out on 25 January 2017. Only 1,020 of the 1,202 selected candidates joined, which left 182 posts vacant. The government appointed 142 candidates from the waiting list on 23 November 2017 and 25 more on 24 January 2018.
A provisional seniority list was circulated on 20 September 2023 and finalised on 16 April 2024 after objections. Some engineers challenged it before the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal, which allowed their applications on 10 July 2024. In a common judgment of 2 December 2025, the High Court allowed five writ petitions against that decision, one of them filed by the State, and set aside both the Tribunal's order and the final seniority list. Three review applications followed.
What the review applicants said
The main ground was that the recruiting authorities should have verified the documents of the meritorious candidates before forwarding names. If that had been done, the review applicants said, they would have been selected at the first stage and would not have been appointed eight months after the first list. They argued that the Court was wrong to treat the 180 unfilled posts as left vacant by candidates who were ineligible or failed verification, and that 121 of them would otherwise have been picked in the first round.
They also argued that notional seniority is permissible under Pawan Pratap Singh v. Reevan Singh, that wait-listed candidates are equally eligible and qualified, that delay caused by the selection committee cannot be held against them, and that clause 14(B) of the advertisement requires seniority by marks and rank, not by date of appointment or joining.
What the judgment had already decided
The Bench set out what it had considered in December. Rule 4 of the Maharashtra Civil Services (Regulation of Seniority) Rules, 1982 fixes seniority ordinarily by length of continuous service. Rule 4(2) sets inter se seniority among direct recruits selected in one batch by their order of preference, provided they join within thirty days or any extended time allowed. Clause 14(B) says the merit order of the selected and appointed candidates determines seniority. The Court had also considered Pawan Pratap Singh and clause 3 of a Government Resolution of 28 May 2018.
The deciding point was a fact that is not disputed. The applicants joined at least eight months after the candidates appointed under the first orders, and were not in service when that batch joined. Their appointment orders themselves were issued only after the first batch had joined. They were appointed because some selected candidates did not join or lacked the required documents, and the Court had treated those appointments as fortuitous. The first batch therefore formed one batch, and the wait-list appointees a separate one.
The Court had also dealt with the 2021 seniority rules. The seniority list was based on joining dates in 2017 and 2018, well before 2021, so the 1982 Rules applied, and the argument that the later rules had superseded them was rejected.
The limits of review
Respondents relied on S. Madhusudhan Reddy v. V. Narayana Reddy, which restates the scope of review under Order 47 Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Review is available for discovery of new and important material that could not have been produced with due diligence, for a mistake or error apparent on the face of the record, or for another reason of an analogous kind. It is not available to repeat arguments already rejected, to correct inconsequential mistakes, to rehear the case, or as an appeal in disguise. The possibility of a second view is not enough, and an error that has to be searched for is not an error apparent on the face of the record. The Bench also referred to the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Malleeswari v. K. Suguna on the difference between review and appellate power.
Order
The Bench found no error apparent on the face of the record. It had decided the petitions on the rules and the advertisement, and any remaining grievance could not be considered in review. Review Application (Civil) Nos. 73, 74 and 75 of 2026 were dismissed. The order was written by Justice Kishore C. Sant, reserved on 4 September and pronounced on 12 October 2026. Mr Jiwan J. Patil appeared for the applicants.