Uttarakhand HC Upholds UPCL Bye-Law Giving Absorbed UPPCL Employees Faster Promotion Track

The Uttarakhand High Court dismissed a challenge to a UPCL service bye-law that allows absorbed UPPCL employees to seek promotion after five years while direct recruits must wait ten.

A Division Bench of the High Court of Uttarakhand at Nainital, comprising Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari and Justice Pankaj Purohit, dismissed a writ petition filed by two Technician Grade-II employees of Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd. (UPCL) who challenged a bye-law that requires them to complete ten years of qualifying service before being considered for promotion to Junior Engineer, while colleagues absorbed from Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd. (UPPCL) need only five. The bench held that employees absorbed from UPPCL constitute a distinct “Protected Class” by virtue of a 2002 office memo that guaranteed their service conditions would not be varied to their disadvantage, and that the differential treatment therefore rests on an intelligible differentia with a rational nexus to the object of the classification. The petition was dismissed on 12 June 2026.

The Dispute Before the High Court

The petitioners, Rahul Giri and one other, were appointed as Labour in UPCL after the corporation came into existence on 5 November 2001. They were subsequently promoted to the post of Technician Grade-II in 2011–2012. The next promotional post in the hierarchy is Junior Engineer.

UPCL framed the Junior Engineer (Electrical and Mechanical) Service Bye-Laws in 2018. Clause 20(B)(two) of those bye-laws prescribes that a Technician Grade-I or Technician Grade-II must complete ten years of qualifying service before becoming eligible to sit for the departmental examination for promotion to Junior Engineer.

However, a proviso to Rule 20(B) carves out a separate track for employees who were originally serving in the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board (UPSEB) or UPPCL and were later absorbed into UPCL. For that group, the qualifying service requirement is governed by the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board Subordinate Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Service Regulations, 1972. Under those 1972 Regulations, a Technician Grade-II holding a High School qualification was eligible for promotion after only five years of service.

The petitioners sought three reliefs: a declaration that Clause 20(B) of the 2018 Bye-Laws is null and void as ultra vires the Constitution; quashing of a corresponding eligibility condition in an advertisement dated 14 April 2020 issued by UPCL; and a direction to UPCL to consider their cases for promotion on the same footing as the absorbed UPPCL employees.

The Article 14 Challenge

Senior Advocate A.S. Rawat, assisted by Mr. Raveendra Singh Bisht, argued for the petitioners that the proviso to Rule 20(B) splits a single homogeneous class into two groups. Both groups — the petitioners and the absorbed UPPCL employees — hold the post of Technician Grade-II and perform the same functions. Treating them differently for the purpose of promotion, counsel contended, amounts to an artificial classification with no intelligible differentia, and is therefore violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

The petitioners' case rested on the proposition that once all employees reached the post of Technician Grade-II, their prior history of appointment ceased to be a relevant distinguishing factor. Counsel submitted that the classification was evasive and bore no just and reasonable relation to any legitimate object.

UPCL's Defence: A 2002 Promise to Absorbed Employees

Mr. Dharmendra Barthwal, appearing for UPCL (respondent no.2), traced the origin of the differential treatment to events surrounding the very creation of UPCL. When UPCL was constituted on 5 November 2001, UPPCL had been responsible for electricity distribution. Officers and employees of UPPCL were initially deemed to be on deputation to UPCL. Many were reluctant to accept absorption because of uncertainty about their career prospects in the new entity.

To address that reluctance, the Chairman and Managing Director of UPCL issued an office memo on 18 December 2002 providing for the absorption of Group-C and Group-D employees with effect from 1 January 2003. Clause 1 of that memo contained an assurance that the service conditions of absorbed employees would not be varied to their disadvantage.

UPCL's counsel argued that the proviso to Rule 20(B) of the 2018 Bye-Laws is directly referable to that promise. Because the absorbed employees had been assured their existing service conditions would be protected, UPCL could not, when framing the 2018 Bye-Laws, impose the new ten-year qualifying service requirement on them. The petitioners, having been appointed directly in UPCL after its creation, received no such assurance and therefore cannot claim parity with the protected group.

How the Bench Reasoned

The bench began by restating the settled constitutional position on Article 14. The provision forbids class legislation but does not forbid reasonable classification. For a classification to survive scrutiny it must be founded on an intelligible differentia that distinguishes the grouped persons from those left out, and that differentia must have a rational relation to the object sought to be achieved. Article 14 applies where equals are treated differently without reasonable basis; it does not apply where the persons being compared are not, in fact, equals.

Applying that framework to the facts, the bench found that employees absorbed from UPPCL are not in the same position as the petitioners. Their absorption into UPCL was conditional on a specific promise — recorded in the office memo of 18 December 2002 — that their service conditions as on the date of absorption would remain unchanged. That promise was the inducement for their consent to absorption. It created a contractual and institutional obligation on UPCL that could not be undone by the 2018 Bye-Laws.

The bench held that employees covered by the office memo dated 18 December 2002 belong to a “Protected Class”, while there is no such protection offered to petitioners. The fact that both groups eventually held the post of Technician Grade-II did not erase the foundational difference in the circumstances of their entry into UPCL's service. The bench was therefore not persuaded by the argument that the two groups formed one homogeneous class for the purpose of promotion eligibility.

On the two-part test for reasonable classification, the bench concluded that the differentia — the existence of the 2002 absorption promise — is real and substantial, not artificial or evasive. The nexus between that differentia and the object of the proviso (honouring the promise made to absorbed employees) was, in the bench's view, direct and rational. The classification made by the proviso to Rule 20(B)(two) of the 2018 Bye-Laws therefore did not offend Article 14.

Outcome

The Division Bench dismissed the writ petition. The challenge to Clause 20(B) of the UPCL Junior Engineer (Electrical and Mechanical) Service Bye-Laws, 2018 was rejected. The prayer to quash the eligibility condition in the advertisement dated 14 April 2020 and the prayer for a direction to consider the petitioners for promotion on par with absorbed UPPCL employees were both refused. The order was pronounced on 12 June 2026.