Twelve instructors win permanency after twenty-one years — with arrears for only the last ten

A Division Bench of Justices M. S. Karnik and Sandesh D. Patil hold that the Corporation's own resolution appointing the petitioners and its approved proposal for their regularisation must weigh in their favour, and grant arrears of salary from 1 October 2016.

They teach turning, plumbing, sheet metal work, motor vehicle mechanics, wiring, painting, engineering drawing and workshop calculation at an Industrial Training Centre run by the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation. The Corporation's Standing Committee appointed them to temporary posts, and once the posts were sanctioned the Corporation approved a proposal to regularise them. The State Government refused to approve it — in 2005. The twelve instructors filed a writ petition that year and have worked ever since under the High Court's interim orders. On 1 October 2026 a Division Bench allowed the petition, with one modification that costs them eleven years of back pay.

Appointed by the Corporation, refused by the State

The petitioners were instructors at the Industrial Training Centre at Morwadi, Pimpri, in a range of trades — an Electronics Mechanic Instructor, a Draughtsman Mechanical Instructor, a Sheet Metal Worker Instructor, a Mechanic Motor Vehicle Instructor, a Turner Instructor, a Painter General Instructor, a Wireman Instructor, an Engineering Drawing Instructor, a Workshop Calculation and Science Instructor, a Plumber Instructor and a Computer Operator and Programming Assistant Instructor among them. When the petition was filed they ranged in age from twenty-eight to forty-one.

The respondents were the State of Maharashtra through its Municipal Development Division, the Municipal Commissioner of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, and the Principal of the Industrial Training Centre. Writ Petition No. 2566 of 2005 was heard with a civil application of 2012.

The sequence the Bench found decisive was the Corporation's own. The Standing Committee had initially appointed the petitioners to the temporary posts. After the posts came to be sanctioned, the Corporation submitted a proposal, which it had approved, for their regularisation. The State Government refused to approve that proposal — a refusal which, by the time of this judgment, was twenty-one years old.

What weighed in their favour

The Bench acknowledged that the petitioners had continued in service under the interim orders of the Court — the kind of circumstance that often counts against a claim to permanency, since it can be said that the employee owes his continued presence to litigation rather than to any right.

Here the Court took the opposite view of it. “In our opinion the overall facts of the case, the resolution of the Standing Committee initially appointing the petitioners in the temporary posts and then submitting a proposal approved by the Corporation for regularisation after the posts were sanctioned, are circumstances, which in our opinion must weigh in favour of the petitioners.” The employer had created the posts, filled them, and then asked for the appointments to be made permanent. What was missing was only the State's approval.

Arrears, and the limit on them

Counsel for the petitioners asked for arrears of salary from the date of their initial appointment, or at the least from the date when the posts came to be sanctioned.

Senior Advocate Mr. Kiran Bapat for the Corporation resisted that, submitting that granting arrears from the date the posts were sanctioned would place a heavy financial burden on the Corporation, and pointing out that the State Government had refused to approve the Corporation's own proposal for regularisation as far back as 2005.

The Bench accepted the burden argument in part. “In the peculiar facts we are not inclined to grant salary from the date of sanctioning of the posts; however, we are of the opinion that ends of justice would be met if the arrears of salary in the pay scale are paid to the petitioners for the past ten years.”

The State's refusal is the part of the record that goes unexplained. The Corporation sanctioned the posts, appointed the petitioners to them, and approved a proposal to make the appointments permanent. What stood between the instructors and regularisation for twenty-one years was the Municipal Development Division's withholding of approval in 2005, and the judgment records no reason offered for it.

Order

The writ petition was allowed in terms of the prayer clause seeking that relief, subject to one modification. The petitioners are entitled to regularisation, permanency and consequential benefits from the date of sanctioning of the posts. The arrears of salary are to be granted with effect from 1 October 2016 — that is, for the last ten years — and are to be paid within a period of one year from the date of the judgment. The civil application was also disposed of.

The split in the order is worth noting. Status and consequential benefits run from the date the posts were sanctioned; money runs only from 2016. Everything between the sanctioning of the posts and that date is treated as a cost of the delay, and borne by the instructors rather than by either of the authorities responsible for it.