Uncommunicated C grades can end a career: Supreme Court upholds compulsory retirement of two clerks
Justice Manmohan and Justice Shree Chandrashekhar dismiss the appeals of two Chhattisgarh clerks, holding that a similar colleague left in service does not make a compulsory retirement order invalid.
The Supreme Court on 6 November 2026 upheld the compulsory retirement of two Chhattisgarh government clerks, Chatur Singh Dhruw and Manharan Lal Sahu. Both were retired in the public interest on 9 October 2017, after a departmental screening that flagged five of 14 eligible clerks.
A bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Shree Chandrashekhar dismissed their appeals and affirmed the Chhattisgarh High Court. Justice Manmohan wrote the judgment, which is marked reportable.
The bench rejected five arguments: selective treatment, stigma, a narrow look at the service record, reliance on uncommunicated entries, and the effect of promotion and regularisation. It held that an employee cannot succeed merely by pointing to a similar colleague who was kept on.
Peons who rose to clerks
Both men began as Class-IV peons in the Legal Metrology (Weights and Measures) Department at Raipur, in 1989 and 1993 respectively. They were promoted to Assistant Grade-III in 2012 and 2013. Their services were regularised by separate orders dated 19 June 2015.
On 25 April 2017 the General Administration Department of the State circulated a direction to all departments. They were to review service records and consider compulsory retirement of servants who met the prescribed parameters. It continued an earlier circular of 22 August 2000.
The parameters were honesty and integrity, physical capacity, reputation and work capacity, and an overall evaluation below ‘Good’ (B) grade. The circular added that not every adverse remark needs to have been communicated to the servant, and that the work of the last five years should be checked for decline.
Orders dated 9 October 2017 then retired both appellants under Fundamental Rule 56 and Rule 42(1)(b) of the Chhattisgarh Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1976. A Single Judge declined to interfere on 23 August 2019. A Division Bench affirmed that on 12 April 2023 in Writ Appeal Nos. 565 and 577 of 2019.
On 9 October 2025 the Supreme Court had told the State to file an affidavit, personally affirmed by the Principal Secretary of the department. It was to state that no similarly situated person had been left out of the exercise of weeding out dead wood from the cadre.
What the appellants argued
Mr. Kaustubh Shukla appeared for the appellants. He said the criteria were not applied uniformly, and that similarly placed employees escaped the same treatment. The exercise, he argued, was arbitrary and discriminatory, and he relied on the Court’s order of 9 October 2025.
He called the orders punitive and stigmatic in substance. The inquiry reports, he said, attributed misconduct and personal failings to the appellants. One report on Chatur Singh Dhruw said he was not performing his duties with honesty and integrity. Compulsory retirement, Mr. Shukla argued, could not stand in for disciplinary proceedings.
He also argued that the authorities looked mainly at recent years instead of the whole career. The adverse entries and below-benchmark gradings had never been communicated to the appellants, he said, citing Dev Dutt v. Union of India (2008) 8 SCC 725 and Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India (2013) 9 SCC 566.
His last point was that promotion and the regularisation of 19 June 2015 had drained earlier adverse entries of significance. He relied on Baikuntha Nath Das v. Chief District Medical Officer (1992) 2 SCC 299.
Fourteen clerks, one chart
Mr. Rajat Nair, Additional Advocate General, appeared for the State. He said a Head of Department level Screening Committee met on 4 September 2017 at the office of the Controller, Legal Metrology, Naya Raipur. The Controller, Dr. Ajay Kumar Pathak, chaired it with two other members.
The Committee covered every clerical employee who had reached 50 years of age or completed 20 years of qualifying service on 1 July 2017. That brought in 14 people. It went through their service dossiers, confidential reports, personal files, integrity records, and leave and medical records.
Its parameters, as minuted, were honesty and integrity, physical capacity, efficiency and reputation, and an overall assessment of the entire service record. It also looked at the confidential reports for 2013 to 2017 for a declining trend, with attention to repeated ‘C’ gradings.
The Committee converted grades into numbers: A+ was 5, A was 4, B was 3, C was 2 and D was 1. It averaged the scores over the years for which reports existed. Missing years were not held against anyone.
Five clerks fell below the benchmark and showed adverse or declining trends. The State’s chart gives Chatur Singh Dhruw a 4 in 2013 and a 2 in each year from 2014 to 2017, an average of 2.4. It shows Manharan Lal Sahu at 2 in every year.
The other three recommended for retirement were Ramlal Sarute, Ishwar Prasad Sahu and Chitram Dhruve. For Sahu, the Committee also noted that the Controlling Office’s integrity certificate recorded his integrity as questionable (para 21).
How far courts can look
The bench began with the scope of judicial review. An order of compulsory retirement, it said, is “neither punitive nor stigmatic in character” (para 24). It implies no finding of misconduct. The rule of audi alteram partem and Article 311(2) therefore do not apply.
The decision rests on the subjective satisfaction of the competent authority that continued service is no longer in the public interest. Whether an officer has become dead wood is for the executive. But that satisfaction cannot rest on conjecture or whim. It must rest on objective and relevant material (para 25).
The Court relied on Nand Kumar Verma v. State of Jharkhand (2012) 3 SCC 580 for the point that courts may check whether valid material exists. Where the Government has set its own norms, review extends to whether those norms were observed (para 26).
A court does not re-weigh the material as if hearing an appeal. It asks whether relevant material existed, whether the authority considered it, and whether a reasonable person could reach the same conclusion. Interference is warranted only for no evidence, non-application of mind, manifest arbitrariness, perversity or mala fides (paras 27 and 28).
Negative equality is no ground
On selective treatment, the bench said an employee cannot challenge retirement merely because another officer with a comparable record was spared. The assessment of utility, integrity and efficiency is an individual exercise on each employee’s own material. Article 14, it said, embodies a positive concept and:
“does not countenance the claim of negative equality” (para 29)
A wrong done in favour of one person cannot be the basis for repeating it for another. The Court cited Union of India v. M.K. Sarkar (2010) 2 SCC 59 and Basawaraj v. Special Land Acquisition Officer (2013) 14 SCC 81.
The power to retire a servant compulsorily is of wide amplitude, the bench held. It is conditioned mainly by the need for the opinion to be formed in good faith on relevant material (para 30).
The comparison with the nine who stayed
The bench then examined the facts, and found that the parameters had in any case been applied uniformly. The Circular set a mechanism for review of servants aged 50 or with 20 years of service. The Screening Committee was constituted under it and adopted a uniform, objective and transparent method for all 14 employees (paras 31 and 32).
Relying on the affidavit of the Principal Secretary and the Committee’s minutes, the bench held that none of the nine retained employees showed the combination of adverse factors found in the appellants. Those were an overall assessment below Grade B, sustained C gradings from 2013 to 2017 with no improvement, and adverse remarks on efficiency and performance (para 34).
The State’s chart also lists several retained clerks with averages below 3, among them 2.6 and 2.8. The bench’s comparison turned on the combination of three factors, not on the average alone.
It added that the same standards led the Committee to recommend three other employees for retirement as well. The exercise was not meant to punish anyone, and no relaxation or departure from the parameters was shown. The bench was satisfied that no discriminatory treatment had been established (paras 34 to 36).
Whole record first, last five years second
On the argument about the narrow look, the bench found that the Committee first evaluated each employee’s entire service record against the Grade B benchmark. Only then did it examine the confidential reports of the preceding five years, 2013 to 2017, for any pattern of decline (para 37).
Those reports were an ancillary and corroborative exercise, not the sole basis. That emphasis matched paragraph D of the Circular, which asks whether the work of the last five years is decreasing. After the parameters had been applied to everyone, five were identified and nine found fit (para 38).
Promotion does not erase later entries
The bench did not accept that promotion made the later adverse material irrelevant. The principle that adverse entries lose their sting on promotion covers only entries made before the promotion, which the employer is taken to have overlooked. It does not wipe out entries recorded after promotion, in the promoted post itself (para 39).
Sahu was promoted from peon to Assistant Grade-III on 3 October 2012, and Dhruw on 14 March 2013. Both were already in the promoted post when the reports for 2013 to 2017 were written (para 40).
Dhruw got an A in 2013 and then C for four consecutive years. Sahu’s reports showed repeated C gradings with remarks of unsatisfactory performance (para 41).
Those entries showed declining performance in the promoted post and could not be neutralised by earlier promotions, the bench said (para 42).
Regularisation fared no better. It does not amount to promotion on merit or comparative assessment. It only gives substantive status in the post already held and cannot be read as an endorsement of efficiency or future suitability (para 43).
Orders that carried no stigma
The bench read the orders of 9 October 2017 and found they record only that the appellants, having completed the required service, were being retired in the public interest with State Government approval. They contain no allegation of misconduct and no finding of culpability (paras 44 and 45).
The order for Chatur Singh Dhruw, reproduced in the judgment, says he completed 20 years of service on 8 September 2009. It retires him with immediate effect from 9 October 2017 without notice.
The Committee’s minutes did not change that. The Court looks primarily at the order itself, the bench said. Internal assessments that help the authority form its view do not make the consequential order punitive (para 46).
The September 2017 review, it held, was a purely administrative exercise in the public interest. No departmental inquiry was pending or contemplated against either appellant. The suggestion that retirement was a device to avoid disciplinary proceedings was unsupported by the record (para 47).
Uncommunicated entries and Dev Dutt
The bench called the argument on uncommunicated entries devoid of merit. In Baikuntha Nath Das, it said, the Court held that a compulsory retirement order is not to be quashed merely because uncommunicated adverse remarks were also considered (para 48).
It found Dev Dutt and Sukhdev Singh misplaced. Those decisions arose in the context of promotion and career progression, where an entry may harm promotional prospects. They operate in a distinct field and cannot be extended mechanically to compulsory retirement, which has its own settled jurisprudence (para 49).
Order
The Supreme Court held that the process was carried out under the applicable provisions and the Circular of 25 April 2017, that the parameters were applied uniformly, and that the decision rested on relevant and cogent material. It found no arbitrariness, mala fides, perversity or violation of a constitutional or statutory guarantee (para 50).
The judgments of 12 April 2023 were affirmed and the appeals dismissed. There was no order as to costs, and pending applications were disposed of (para 51).