MP HC revives Rs 70 pay hike recovery from police clerks: Rafiq Masih no shield after 12 years of court stays
A division bench of Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal allowed five State appeals and set aside single-judge orders that had quashed recoveries of up to Rs 15.8 lakh from ministerial staff of the Madhya Pradesh Police, holding that employees who kept an erroneous ad hoc increase under court stays from 2006 to 2018 cannot invoke Rafiq Masih, and that two of them had filed barred second writ petitions.
A Rs 70 addition to basic pay granted in 2005 has grown, with two decades of compounding, into recoveries of Rs 7.8 lakh to Rs 15.8 lakh from clerical staff of the Madhya Pradesh Police. On 28 October 2026 the Madhya Pradesh High Court at Jabalpur restored those recoveries, allowing five State appeals against single-judge orders that had quashed them.
A division bench of Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal held that State of Punjab v. Rafiq Masih, the Supreme Court ruling the employees relied on against recovery, does not protect those who held on to the money only because courts had stayed the recovery for more than a decade.
Five appeals, one Rs 70 increase
The appeals were filed under Section 2(1) of the Madhya Pradesh Uchcha Nyayalaya (Khandpeeth Ko Appeal) Adhiniyam, 2005, against orders dated 19 September 2025. Writ Appeal No. 2472 of 2026 against Mohammad Aslam was treated as the lead case; the others concerned Rajesh Kumar Mishra, Ashok Kumar Dubey, D.R.S. Yadav and Smt Anita Choudhari.
The bench condoned the State’s delay in filing, accepting reasons relating to verification of records and administrative approvals, and noting that the controversy concerned public money and affected a large class of employees. The matter was heard on 29 September 2026.
All five respondents belonged to the ministerial establishment of the police. In 2005 the Police Department extended to them, along with the executive police force, an ad hoc increase of Rs 70 in basic pay under the M.P. Revision of Pay Rules, 1983. On 25 March 2006 the Home Department directed withdrawal of the benefit and recovery of the excess.
The challenge to that withdrawal went all the way up. The judgment records that on 25 September 2018 the Supreme Court held that ministerial employees were not entitled to parity with the executive police force and affirmed the legality of the recovery.
Two employees came back a second time
Aslam retired as Subedar (Ministerial) from the office of the Superintendent of Police, PTS (MT), Bhopal, in 2005. A recovery order of 8 December 2020 directed deduction of the excess with interest in monthly instalments.
He challenged it in W.P. No. 10530 of 2021, and on 16 July 2021 the court quashed only the interest while upholding recovery of the principal.
He did not appeal. A consequential order of 6 December 2024 fixed the principal at Rs 15,45,794. Aslam then filed W.P. No. 20815 of 2025 against that order, and the single judge quashed the recovery relying on State of M.P. v. Ramrao Bhimte.
Mishra, a Constable (Ministerial) in the Radio Zone office at Jabalpur, faced a recovery order of 18 September 2020 for Rs 7,84,802 principal and Rs 6,11,275 interest, a total of Rs 13,96,077.
In W.P. No. 8814 of 2021 the court on 22 June 2021 struck down the interest and upheld the principal. A fresh order of 12 April 2023 demanded only Rs 7,84,802.
He too filed again, in W.P. No. 13943 of 2024, pleading that he was Class III, the recovery was belated, he was not heard, the treasury had approved his pay fixation and he had signed no indemnity bond.
The State said he had given an undertaking in 2017 to refund any excess. The single judge quashed the recovery on Ramrao Bhimte.
Three retirees and deductions from retiral dues
Dubey, a Sub-Inspector (Ministerial), retired on 31 January 2025. A recovery order of 6 December 2024 for Rs 15,80,956 was passed 56 days before he retired, and the amount was adjusted against his retiral dues. The State said he had given a written undertaking in 2009.
Choudhari, a Subedar (Ministerial), retired on 31 December 2023. Her recovery order of 8 December 2020 came while more than three years of her service remained. Yadav, also a Sub-Inspector (Ministerial), had been party to the earlier round of litigation, including W.P. No. 13500 of 2006, W.A. No. 1433 of 2007 and an SLP decided on 25 September 2018.
In each case the single judge quashed the recovery and ordered a refund, relying on Rafiq Masih, Ramrao Bhimte and, in Yadav’s case, the Full Bench in State of M.P. v. Jagdish Prasad Dubey.
State: finality, suppression and Shail Sahu
Mr Darshan Soni, Government Advocate, argued that Aslam and Mishra had suppressed their earlier writ petitions, in which recovery of the principal had attained finality.
He relied on State of M.P. v. Anita Basnet, W.A. No. 1331 of 2026, and State of M.P. v. Satyaveer Singh Yadav, W.A. No. 2439 of 2025. Division benches there held that an employee who had obtained quashing of interest in a first round, on her own offer to deposit the principal, could not reopen the principal.
He also cited State of M.P. v. Smt. Shail Sahu, W.A. No. 298 of 2016, decided on 8 August 2016. There the bench held that Rafiq Masih did not apply because recovery ordered in 2006 could not be effected due to stays until 11 April 2011 and was carried out immediately after on the court’s own directions.
Mr Atul Kumar Rai appeared for the employees. The judgment records that the State itself placed Ramrao Bhimte, W.A. No. 1657 of 2025, before the court: a division bench there held on 23 July 2025 that Rafiq Masih squarely applied to a ministerial employee of the police, and the State’s SLP was dismissed on 1 December 2025.
A Gwalior bench had followed Ramrao Bhimte on the State’s concession in State of M.P. v. Chandrasekhar Tripathi on 12 August 2026, as had State of M.P. v. Sanjay Naithani, W.A. No. 1765 of 2025. Neither, the bench noted, added independent reasoning.
S.H. Baig: parity denied, recovery affirmed
Justice Mittal, writing for the bench, went back to S.H. Baig v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2012 Supreme (SC) 925. The Supreme Court there agreed that the recruitment, qualifications and duties of ministerial and executive staff differed, so ministerial employees could not claim parity.
It affirmed the High Court’s judgment on the recoveries sought for 1 January 2000 to 17 November 2001.
That High Court ruling was Sushma Tiwari v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2011 Supreme (MP) 1407, which quashed recovery for that period but expressly allowed the State to recover the excess paid after 17 November 2001 in instalments.
When one constable, Anita Chowdhri, later sought clarification from the Supreme Court about recovery after 17 November 2001, the court gave no direction setting it aside. It held only that the amount paid between 1 January 2000 and 17 November 2001 was not recoverable, and left the employees to seek legal recourse.
A single judge in Gajendra Singh Rauthar v. State of M.P., W.P. No. 17624 of 2015, had nonetheless set aside the recovery on that clarification. The bench said that writ court had not properly understood Anita Chowdhry and had taken a view contrary to the division bench.
Why Ramrao Bhimte and Madanlal do not bind
Ramrao Bhimte was distinguishable, the bench held, because recovery there was initiated seven years after retirement. Here recovery was initiated in 2006, stayed by the High Court and the Supreme Court, and re-initiated in 2020, while the employees were in service, after their SLP was disposed of.
Madanlal Bardele, W.A. No. 291 of 2016, decided on 6 September 2016, had been delivered without noticing Shail Sahu of 8 August 2016, in which the same writ petitioner was a party. Under the Full Bench ruling in Jabalpur Bus Association, a later bench decision that ignores an earlier one is not a binding precedent.
The dismissal of the State’s SLP against Madanlal on 15 September 2023 did not change that, the court said. A dismissal in limine did not mean the Supreme Court had disapproved Shail Sahu, which it had itself affirmed in substance in S.H. Baig.
The facts that recovery had been ordered in 2006 and stayed through S.H. Baig, including Supreme Court stay orders of 23 September 2011 and 17 October 2011, had not been brought to the notice of the benches in Ramrao Bhimte and Madanlal. Those orders were therefore distinguishable.
Unjust enrichment under cover of a stay
The bench recorded that all five respondents had been parties to Writ Appeal No. 1760 of 2007, in which a division bench passed a recovery order that the Supreme Court then stayed. Recovery stood stayed from 2005 to 2018 before the High Court and the Supreme Court, so it could never be finalised in that period.
In those circumstances, the court said, “the employee can not take benefit of the Rafiq Masih case” (para 16). The department had already recovered the principal and relaxed the interest.
The bench described the sums as illegal enrichment of a huge amount withheld under court stays. More than 1,000 similarly placed employees had received it, and quashing recovery would cost the Government multiple crores. At retirement an employee receives gratuity, insurance, GPF and other benefits higher than the recovery amount, so the department had, in effect, already relaxed the burden.
It concluded that “setting aside the recovery amount would result in unjust enrichment of the employee” (para 14). Where recovery has been stayed by a court, whether it can be made after retirement depends on the terms of the stay and the final outcome of the proceedings.
Second petitions and the hardship test
Mishra’s second petition was barred, the bench held. His first petition had challenged the same order of 18 September 2020 and ended with the principal upheld, and he had not appealed.
The Class III and delay grounds were available in 2021, Rafiq Masih having been decided in 2015, and nothing had intervened since. Alok Kumar Yadav and Anita Basnet bar such a second petition on the same cause of action.
The review order in Ramrao Bhimte did not help him because the earlier round there concerned withdrawal of the benefit, not a recovery order. For Dubey, Yadav and Choudhari, the court noted that the recovery orders predated retirement, the 2005 recovery had been stayed by the Supreme Court, and these facts had been suppressed from the single judge.
Finally, the bench applied Dr. M.K. Ravi Varma v. National Institute of Technology, 2026 Live Law 1019. The Supreme Court there held that hardship must be pleaded and proved in the writ petition, for instance that the excess had been spent on medical treatment.
Only in such a deserving case, and where the employee shows no misrepresentation or fraud, may a court quash a recovery notice.
No hardship of that kind had been pleaded here, the bench said. The cases of other persons could not be used to evaluate an individual employee’s hardship, and the contention was rejected.
Order
Relying on Sushma Tiwari and Dr. M.K. Ravi Varma, the bench held that Rafiq Masih does not apply to these cases. All five writ appeals were allowed and the single-judge orders of 19 September 2025 were set aside.
The recoveries of the principal amount of the ad hoc increase, with interest already relaxed by the department, therefore stand. A copy of the order was directed to be placed in the connected cases. The order was pronounced on 28 October 2026.