Ten years on contract, then told to sit a written exam: Bombay HC orders doctors regularised
A Division Bench quashes the State’s insistence on a fresh test, grants permanency within two weeks, and asks the government to end long-term contractual hiring across municipal corporations.
Doctors who had staffed a municipal corporation’s hospitals and health centres for between eight and ten years were told, in January 2026, that they would have to pass a written examination before they could be made permanent. On 21 September 2026, in Dr. Bhakti Deepak Chaudhary and Others v. Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation, a Division Bench of Justice G.S. Kulkarni and Justice Aarti Sathe quashed that requirement and directed the Corporation to absorb and regularise them, with regularization orders to issue within two weeks.
The Bench went further than the petitioners had asked. It recorded its clear opinion that the State Government is required to step in and issue a directive to all municipal corporations to do away with long-term contractual appointments and grant regularization in accordance with the principles the Supreme Court has laid down.
How they were appointed
The petitioners are MBBS doctors domiciled in Maharashtra, employed with the Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation on a contractual basis. Their appointments were not informal arrangements. They applied under advertisements issued by the Corporation and were selected through an independent selection process before a duly constituted Selection Committee, in accordance with the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act, 1949 and the applicable recruitment rules.
The judgment sets out the statutory scheme they were appointed under: Section 51 of the MMC Act, which provides for the number, designations and grades of municipal officers and servants; Section 52, on restrictions on the employment of permanent officers and servants; Section 53, on where the power of appointment vests; Section 54, on the manner of making appointments; and Section 55, containing savings in respect of officers appointed earlier.
They staffed the Corporation’s medical institutions — its hospitals, urban primary health centres and associated facilities — and did so continuously for the better part of a decade.
Two communications, and what they required
The immediate trigger was a communication dated 21 January 2026 from the Urban Development Department to the Commissioner of the Corporation, and a consequent communication of 28 January 2026 from the Deputy Commissioner (Medical Health) to the Corporation’s legal department. Their effect was to subject the petitioners to a written examination as a condition of permanency.
What made that difficult to defend was what had already happened elsewhere. The Bench recorded that the plight of similarly placed employees had been considered by the State Government while dealing with other municipal corporations, where regularization had been granted. In the Vasai Virar Corporation itself, thirty-three employees had been granted regularization with State approval, without being subjected to any further selection procedure. The law, the Bench held, would be required to be applied uniformly to all such employees.
That principle has its own authority. In State of U.P. v. Arvind Kumar Srivastava, the Supreme Court held that the normal rule in service jurisprudence is that when relief is granted to one set of employees, all other identically situated employees are entitled to the same benefit, and denial would not be sustainable.
Not back-door entrants
The standard objection to regularising long-serving contractual staff is Umadevi — the concern that irregular appointments should not be legitimised by the passage of time. The Bench addressed it directly.
In Sachin Ambadas Dawale v. State of Maharashtra, the same Court had considered whether contractual employees appointed through a public advertisement and a duly constituted Selection Committee could be denied regularization by treating them as back-door entrants within the meaning of Umadevi. It held that where appointments follow the prescribed recruitment procedure through an open selection process, they cannot be so regarded.
Applied here, the conclusion was short: the petitioners were appointed pursuant to public advertisements after selection before a duly constituted Selection Committee under the MMC Act and the recruitment rules, and their appointments cannot be characterised as illegal.
Perennial work
The second strand concerns the nature of the duties rather than the manner of appointment.
In Jaggo v. Union of India, the Supreme Court considered whether employees engaged temporarily or contractually for long periods while performing perennial duties could be denied regularization by relying on the nomenclature of their appointments and on Umadevi. It held that where the work performed is perennial in nature and fundamental to the functioning of the institution, that label cannot be decisive.
In Dharam Singh v. State of U.P., the Court held that although the creation of posts is primarily an executive function, a refusal to sanction posts is not immune from judicial scrutiny on the ground of arbitrariness — particularly where the employer ignores the functional necessity of the work and its own longstanding reliance on employees performing regular and perennial duties.
And in Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand, which the Bench described as succinctly capturing every possible eventuality on the need for regularization, the Supreme Court dealt with Junior Engineers appointed on a temporary and contractual basis in 2012 under terms which stipulated the limits of their engagement.
On those principles the Bench held that the petitioners had continuously discharged perennial and indispensable public health duties after appointment through a duly constituted selection process, so the respondents could not rely on the contractual character of the appointments to deny consideration for regularization. Their refusal, despite long and uninterrupted service, the admitted existence of sanctioned vacancies, and the regularization already granted to others, could not stand.
Nowhere else to go
The judgment also takes account of what a decade of contractual service does to a person’s prospects. Having worked for the Corporation for eight to ten years, the petitioners have nowhere to go except to continue in its employment: the doors of other public employment for similar services, or in recruitments undertaken by comparable organisations, have effectively closed behind them.
That is not a sentimental observation. It goes to why the ad-hoc arrangement is objectionable in the first place — an employer that renews a contract annually for a decade is not preserving flexibility; it is consuming the working life of the person renewed while withholding what regular service brings.
A criticism of the system, not just the decision
The most quotable part of the judgment is its broader diagnosis.
The creation of posts and the filling of vacancies in the manner the applicable rules contemplate ought to be the rule, the Bench held, while contractual appointments for very short durations need to be the exception. What has infected the system is the cultivation of ad-hocism, rather than the creation and maintenance of a robust and permanent cadre appointed as soon as vacancies arise and through the prescribed procedure.
It added a point about employment policy. In a large country where unemployment is one of the prime concerns of the State, no fault can be found with citizens grabbing every possible opportunity of public employment, including contractual and temporary work. Where such a large workforce is available, possessing the requisite qualifications, talent and competence, the Bench said it failed to understand what public purpose would be served by not creating appropriate sanctioned posts and making regular appointments.
The Bench expressed the hope that the Corporation and the State Government would in future take steps to ensure that ad-hocism in public employment is consigned to history, particularly as the jurisprudence is guided by the salutary principles the Supreme Court has recently laid down. The law declared by the Supreme Court under Article 141, it reminded public authorities, is the law of the land and needs to be adhered to in letter and spirit.
On legitimate expectation, the judgment records the doctrinal position it drew on: that legitimate expectation was jurisprudentially a device created to maintain a check on arbitrariness in State action, and that it does not extend to and cannot govern the operation of contracts between private parties, where promissory estoppel holds the field. The doctrine therefore fits a case about a public employer’s conduct towards its own long-serving staff.
What it changes
For the petitioners the effect is immediate and concrete: permanency on the posts they already hold, ordered within a fortnight, without any further test.
For other contractual staff the reasoning is portable rather than automatic. The Bench did not hold that length of service alone compels regularization. What it identified was a combination: appointment through a public advertisement and a properly constituted selection committee; duties that are perennial and indispensable rather than project-bound; sanctioned vacancies that admittedly exist; and comparable employees who have already been regularised without a fresh selection. Where those four things are present, a public employer that refuses is not exercising discretion but acting arbitrarily.
For the State the judgment carries a request rather than a mandamus, and it will be read closely for that reason. A direction to all municipal corporations to end long-term contractual appointments would affect thousands of posts across Maharashtra. The Bench has said such a directive is required; whether the government issues one, and in what terms, is now a question the judgment has put on the table.
Order
The impugned communication dated 21 January 2026 of the Urban Development Department, and the consequent communication dated 28 January 2026 of the Deputy Commissioner (Medical Health), were quashed and set aside, with the consequence that the petitioners cannot be subjected to a written examination. The writ petitions were allowed, directing the Corporation to absorb and regularise the petitioners by conferring permanency on the posts they held on a contractual basis, with regularization orders to be issued within two weeks. The companion petitions, raising similar issues, were disposed of in the same terms by consent. Rule was made absolute, with no costs.