Orissa HC sets aside single-judge ruling on SC-ST own-merit promotions over a 2019 data report it never saw

A division bench of Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Murahari Sri Raman allowed 15 writ appeals by SC and ST engineers, revenue inspectors, doctors and health workers, holding that the single judge who quashed the State clarification on own-merit promotion across 64 writ petitions had no occasion to consider the June 2019 report quantifying inadequate representation, and sent every petition back for fresh hearing.

A single-judge judgment that had upended promotions of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees across the Odisha government has been set aside, not on the merits, but because the judge was never shown the document the whole dispute turned on. On 29 October 2026 a division bench of Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Murahari Sri Raman of the Orissa High Court allowed a batch of 15 writ appeals against the common judgment of 22 January 2026 in Hiranmayee Nayak v. State of Odisha, which had quashed the State's clarification allowing reserved-category officers who rank above the last unreserved candidate to be promoted against unreserved vacancies on their own merit. The bench found that a June 2019 State report quantifying the inadequate representation of SCs and STs in government service, the very material the single judge had said did not exist, was never placed before him, and that petitions from departments governed by different service rules could not have been decided in one judgment. All 64 writ petitions go back to the single judge for a fresh hearing.

One judgment, 64 petitions, departments from irrigation to homoeopathy

The appeals were heard on 29 September 2026 under Article 4 of the Orissa High Court Order, 1948, read with Clause 10 of the Letters Patent and the court's rules. The lead appeal, W.A. No. 440 of 2026, was filed by Sailesh Das, Manas Kumar Behera, Jagatri Sethy alias Barik and Kadambini Bhoi, four Assistant Executive Engineers in the Water Resources Department, through Surya Prasad Mishra, Senior Advocate. The other appellants span the State machinery: Assistant Executive Engineers in the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation and Public Health wings, engineers of the Odisha Lift Irrigation Corporation, 17 Revenue Inspectors from Bargarh district, Assistant Section Officers in the Secretariat, a Senior Ayurvedic Medical Officer, Homoeopathic Medical Officers and Multi-Purpose Health Workers from Kendrapara, Khordha and Kalahandi. Asok Mohanty, Gautam Mukherji, Prafulla Kumar Rath and Anindita Pujari, Senior Advocates, and Adyasidhi Mishra and Haladhar Sethy appeared for the various appellants; Saswat Das, Additional Government Advocate, for the State; and Budhadev Routray, Gautam Misra, Subir Palit and Bhabani Sankar Tripathy, Senior Advocates, with Biswabihari Mohanty, Tarun Patnaik and others, for the original writ petitioners. Dr Binod Kumar Mishra and Rajib Rath appeared for intervenors.

The bench took the facts from W.A. No. 440, which arose from W.P.(C) No. 19884 of 2025. The writ petitioner there, Debasish Nayak, belongs to the Socially and Economically Backward Classes. He joined as a Junior Engineer (Civil) in the Water Resources Department on contract on 7 April 2007, was regularised after six years, and was promoted to Assistant Engineer (Civil) on 6 October 2020 as an unreserved candidate after a 2019 Departmental Promotion Committee. The four appellants, who belong to the ST and SC categories, had joined as contractual Junior Engineers, were regularised after him against reserved posts, and were promoted Assistant Engineer in the DPCs of 2021 and 2022 against roster points, superseding, he said, officers senior to them.

His grievance crystallised in 2025. A final gradation list of Assistant Engineers (Civil) was published on 17 June 2025, and on 9 July 2025 the department promoted Assistant Engineers to Assistant Executive Engineer, a cadre with a sanctioned strength of 1,076 of which 430 posts fall to the promotion quota under the 60:40 split in the Odisha Diploma Engineers' Service (Methods of Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 2012. He complained that 73 ST and SC Assistant Engineers had been promoted against 148 posts earmarked for the unreserved category while his juniors went ahead of him. He challenged the promotion order, the gradation list, and three government letters: the ST and SC Development Department's clarification of 6 May 2024, built on a Law Department opinion of 27 February 2024, and a communication of 27 February 2025 directing that it be followed. The clarification said that a reserved-category officer who stands above a general-category officer in the gradation list cannot be bypassed for the next unreserved vacancy.

The petitioner's legal case was that Odisha had no rule or policy providing reservation in promotion with consequential seniority, and had not collected the quantifiable data on inadequate representation that M. Nagaraj v. Union of India, (2006) 8 SCC 212, requires before Article 16(4A) can be used. He also relied on the proviso to Rule 3A of the Odisha Civil Services (Criteria for Promotion) Rules, 1992, inserted with effect from 12 October 2022, which says that SC and ST candidates appointed on their own merit, by direct recruitment or promotion, and placed above unreserved candidates in the merit list are to be adjusted against unreserved vacancies and not counted within the reserved quota.

What the single judge held and why

The single judge decided 64 writ petitions together, reported as 2026 ILR-CUT ONLINE 1303, and allowed them. He read Rule 3A as clearly confining own-merit adjustment to candidates appointed on their own merit, so that a department could not, by clarification, treat officers who had availed reservation at appointment as own-merit promotees against unreserved vacancies. Under Rule 6 of the 1992 Rules, only the General Administration and Public Grievances Department could interpret those rules; the ST and SC Development Department was not competent to issue the clarification, which had also gone out without the Governor's approval though the rules were framed under Article 309, and the Law Department was equally not competent to give its view. Relying on Nagaraj, Jarnail Singh v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta, Article 335 and the State's admission in Pravakar Mallick v. State of Odisha that it had collected no quantifiable data, he held that no such clarification could have been issued. He quashed the 6 May 2024 clarification, the 27 February 2025 communication and every action taken on them, declared two coordinate-bench decisions, Lalit Kumar Nayak and Litu Behera, per incuriam, and directed all departments to follow Rule 3A and Article 16(4A) as read in Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh.

The authorities the bench set out

Before turning to the appeals, the bench reproduced the governing law at length. From State of Odisha v. Prasanna Kumar Sahoo, (2007) 15 SCC 129, it took the rule that executive instructions under Article 162 cannot override statutory rules, let alone the Constitution. From Nagaraj it set out paragraphs 107 to 109 and 121 to 124: Articles 16(4A) and 16(4B) are enabling provisions; the State is not bound to reserve in promotion, but if it does, it must have quantifiable data showing backwardness and inadequacy of representation and must respect Article 335, the 50 per cent ceiling and the creamy layer. From Jarnail Singh, (2018) 10 SCR 663, it noted that the Constitution Bench declined to refer Nagaraj to a larger bench but held invalid the requirement of collecting data on backwardness of SCs and STs. From Pravakar Mallick, (2020) 5 SCR 222, a case from Odisha, it recorded the Supreme Court's finding that the State had made no provision, by law or executive order, for consequential seniority after the 85th Amendment and that a 2002 resolution issued on Central instructions without examining adequacy of representation had no legal basis.

Two 2026 Supreme Court rulings were also noticed. Union of India v. G. Kiran, (2026) 1 SCR 141, dealing with entry into service, affirmed through Niravkumar Dilipbhai Makwana and Union of India v. Sajib Roy that a reserved candidate who has taken a relaxation cannot migrate to an unreserved vacancy where the rules bar it, while distinguishing Jitendra Kumar Singh v. State of U.P., where the State's instructions permitted migration. West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd v. Dipendu Biswas, (2026) 4 SCR 600, restated the law on vertical and horizontal reservation, mobility from reserved to open category on merit, and compartmentalised versus overall reservation, drawing on Indra Sawhney, Saurav Yadav and Anil Kumar Gupta. The bench recorded that G. Kiran was decided in the context of appointment, in contrast with the question here of promotion.

Five questions had been posed in W.A. No. 468 of 2026: whether officers appointed in the reserved category who had also been promoted in that category could now be promoted against unreserved vacancies; whether the 6 May 2024 clarification squares with R.K. Sabharwal v. State of Punjab; whether, absent quantifiable data under Article 16(4A) as read in Nagaraj and Pravakar Mallick, a reserved candidate can be promoted against an unreserved post in Odisha; whether a circular can supersede the Article 16(4A) mandate; and whether a coordinate-bench judgment that ignores Supreme Court law binds under Article 141. The bench said the third question alone would suffice to test the single judge's view.

The 2019 report that never reached the single judge

Senior counsel for the appellants argued that the single judge had misread B.K. Pavitra v. Union of India and R.K. Sabharwal to hold that reserved-category candidates who had once been promoted at a roster point could not later be promoted on their own merit, and that his premise, the admission in Pravakar Mallick that Odisha had no quantifiable data, was simply out of date. The bench was shown the Tribal Welfare Department order of 15 March 1994, S.R.O. No. 244/1994, issued under Section 4(2) of the Orissa Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services (for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Act, 1975, fixing reservation in both initial recruitment and promotion at 16.25 per cent for SCs and 22.50 per cent for STs. It was also shown a clarification of 10 April 2023 from the General Administration and Public Grievances Department itself, answering a Water Resources Department query, which set out the Law Department's view that reserved-category officers who had availed reservation at appointment but fall above the last unreserved candidate in seniority or merit could be promoted against an unreserved vacancy as own-merit candidates, and that unreserved is not a category in itself but is open to all. The bench found force in the submission that the single judge was wrong to treat the General Administration Department as the only competent interpreter, and said the 2012 engineering rules and the 1975 Act had to be read harmoniously with the 1992 promotion rules.

The decisive document was Annexure-21 to W.A. No. 446 of 2026, the Revenue Inspectors' appeal: a Report on quantification of data regarding the SCs and STs with regard to inadequate representation in Government Services and overall administrative efficiency, published by the ST and SC Development Department on 26 June 2019. Its introduction records that it was prepared for the General Administration Department after the Supreme Court's judgment of 26 September 2018 in Jarnail Singh, using data as on 31 March 2015. Information was sought from 42 administrative departments, including the Legislative Assembly Secretariat, and 137 heads of departments; more than 93 per cent furnished full data and 5.59 per cent partial data, which the bench considered fairly representative of a State-wide position. The report's conclusion at paragraph 6.4 was that SCs and STs suffer socio-economic disabilities and are inadequately represented in government service in both direct recruitment and promotional posts, and that reservation “has no bearing on the administrative inefficiency in the State of Odisha”. Its annexures carry category-wise data on representation in sanctioned posts.

On verifying the record of W.P.(C) No. 13600 of 2025, the petition from which W.A. No. 446 arose, the bench found that “no such Report was submitted before the learned Single Judge for consideration”. Paragraphs 9.3 and 9.4 of the impugned judgment rest on the absence of quantifiable data. Not having been apprised of the 2019 report, the single judge had no occasion to deal with the issues in proper perspective, and the appellants had made out a case for the writ petitions to be reconsidered afresh on every point.

Different services, different rules: why one common judgment could not stand

The bench added a second, structural reason. It was emphasised at the Bar that the 1975 Act itself is not under challenge, and that promotion policy and service conditions differ from department to department. The Revenue Inspectors in W.A. No. 446 are governed by the Odisha District Revenue Service (Method of Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 1983, while the engineers in W.A. No. 440 fall under the Odisha Diploma Engineers' Service Rules, 2012. Each case, the bench said, has to be considered in its own context and on its own merit, and a large number of writ petitions involving different departments with different sets of service rules could not have been disposed of by one common judgment. On that ground too the judgment of 22 January 2026 deserved intervention.

Having decided to interfere, the bench declined to answer the remaining questions the appellants had framed, saying it was neither appropriate nor prudent to do so when the matters were being sent back; all questions are left open for the parties to raise with full material.

Order

The writ appeals were allowed. The common judgment dated 22 January 2026 in Hiranmayee Nayak v. State of Odisha, W.P.(C) No. 7674 of 2025 and 63 connected petitions, reported at 2026 ILR-CUT ONLINE 1303, was set aside in respect of all 64 writ petitions, and the matters were remitted to the single judge for consideration afresh, with a request that the hearing proceed. Appellants and respondents are free to present their cases independently and to file the documents and papers they rely on. Pending interlocutory applications stand disposed of, and there is no order as to costs. The appeals were heard on 29 September 2026 and the judgment delivered on 29 October 2026.