Non-Communication of ACRs, Destroyed Records and Fractional Scoring Entitle Retired Railway Doctor to Notional HAG Promotion
A Supreme Court bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Atul S. Chandurkar grants a retired IRMS officer notional promotion and refixed pension after finding three cumulative procedural failures by the Railway Board.
The Supreme Court has allowed the civil appeal of Dr. Indira Saranath, a retired officer of the Indian Railway Medical Service, holding that she was not treated fairly when her candidature for promotion to Chief Medical Director in the Higher Administrative Grade was assessed in 2006. Writing for a division bench, Justice Atul S. Chandurkar identified three compounding failures: the Railway Board never communicated her Annual Confidential Report entries to her despite her repeated demands; her service records were weeded out in 2013 while the present appeal was pending before the Court; and the Selection Committee awarded her 19.5 points — a fraction for which no basis existed in the Railway Board's own promotion policy. The Court set aside the judgments of the Central Administrative Tribunal and the Delhi High Court, and directed that Dr. Saranath be treated as notionally promoted to HAG grade and that her pension be refixed accordingly.
How the Dispute Reached the Supreme Court
Dr. Saranath was appointed as an Assistant Medical Officer in the IRMS and rose through the service. On 6 December 2006, the Railway Board published two lists promoting officers from Senior Administrative Grade to CMD in HAG. Dr. Saranath was not among those promoted. She was placed at serial number 10 in the list considered by the Selection Committee, which on 10 August 2006 had recommended six of the ten officers before it.
She challenged the promotions of respondents 3 to 9 before the Central Administrative Tribunal, seeking her own promotion as CMD in HAG. The Tribunal dismissed her Original Application on 22 May 2007, finding that she had not secured the benchmark grading of “Very Good+” required for promotion. The Delhi High Court upheld that finding on 9 January 2009, observing that neither the Railway Board's Resolution of 28 March 2000 nor its Circular of 3 June 2002 prescribing the VG+ benchmark had been challenged. Dr. Saranath filed the present civil appeal. She retired from service on 31 May 2008 while the proceedings were pending.
The Benchmark Dispute: Railways Not Bound by DoPT Circulars
Dr. Saranath's first argument was that the Selection Committee applied the wrong benchmark. She pointed to an Office Memorandum issued by the Department of Personnel and Training on 8 February 2002, which prescribed “Very Good” as the benchmark for promotion. She argued that this OM superseded the VG+ standard and should have governed her assessment.
The Court rejected this argument by applying the decision in Prabhat Ranjan Singh and another v. R.K. Kushwaha and others (2018 INSC 796). That case had directly addressed whether the Railways were bound by DoPT rules. The Court had held, after examining the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961 framed under Article 77(3) of the Constitution, that the Railways were specifically excluded from the scope of business allocated to the DoPT. A DoPT circular would apply to the Railways only if the Railways specifically accepted it.
In the present case, the Railway Board had itself issued a Circular on 3 June 2002 — after the DoPT's OM of 8 February 2002 — prescribing VG+ as the benchmark for promotion to HAG, with a note that “stringent criteria of selection shall apply.” The Court held that this Circular governed the appellant's case. The Selection Committee had applied it correctly. This ground of challenge was rejected.
Three Failures That Cumulatively Established Prejudice
The Court then turned to the three remaining grievances, which it assessed together rather than in isolation.
Non-communication of ACR entries. The Minutes of the Selection Committee's proceedings showed that Dr. Saranath's grading for each of the five years from March 2002 to March 2006 was “Very Good.” She was also noted as fit for consideration. Yet she was not promoted. She had written to the Director General, Railway Health Services on 28 December 2005 — before the Selection Committee met — seeking a review of her confidential reports and stating that they had not been properly assessed. She had also sought to quash or ignore adverse ACRs before the Tribunal, and repeated the grievance before the High Court.
The Railway Board's position was that prior to 2008–09, only entries graded “Average” or “Below Average” were communicated to officers. It relied on a communication of 16 September 1998 from the Secretary, Railway Board to that effect. It also argued that the decisions in Dev Dutt v. Union of India (2008 INSC 630) and the larger bench ruling in Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India and others (2013 INSC 275) — which held that every ACR entry must be communicated to the concerned officer — could not apply retrospectively to Dr. Saranath's case.
The Court disagreed. It referred to the three-judge bench decision in Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar v. Union of India and others (SLP (C) No. 26566 of 2004, decided on 22 October 2008), where adverse entries from 1997–98 that had not been communicated were found to have caused civil consequences, and retrospective promotion from 28 August 2000 was granted. The Court held that Dev Dutt did not create a new right but recognised an existing principle: non-communication of ACR entries results in civil consequences. That principle applied to the period before the decision was rendered.
The Court also distinguished Union of India v. Chaman Rana (2018 INSC 230), on which the respondents heavily relied. In Chaman Rana, employees had been superseded in 1997 and 2001–02 but approached the High Court only in 2015. The Court had refused retrospective promotion because of the extreme delay and the risk of administrative chaos. Dr. Saranath's facts were different: she had been demanding her ACRs before the Selection Committee met, had pursued the matter before the Tribunal and the High Court, and had filed the present appeal within a year of her superannuation.
Weeding out of service records during litigation. During the pendency of this appeal, the Court directed the Railway Board to produce Dr. Saranath's ACRs. The Railway Board disclosed in an affidavit dated 9 February 2024 that the records had been “inadvertently” destroyed in 2013, five years after her superannuation. The affidavit itself acknowledged that where judicial proceedings were pending, service records were required to be retained until their conclusion. The present appeal had been filed on 18 April 2009 — within a year of her retirement — and notice had been issued to the respondents on 24 July 2009. The Railway Board had appeared and filed a counter-affidavit. The Court found that the records ought to have been retained and drew an adverse inference against the respondents.
Award of fractional points. The Selection Committee awarded Dr. Saranath 19.5 points. The Railway Board's communication of 22 May 1996, which set out the promotion policy, prescribed whole-number point values: five points for “Outstanding,” four for “Very Good,” three for “Good,” and two for “Average.” No provision for fractional points appeared in that document. The respondents explained that the fraction arose from averaging two part-confidential reports written in a single year, but they did not identify which year or point to any policy authorising that method. The Court found no basis for the fraction. Since the Minutes showed that Dr. Saranath's grading for each of the five years from March 2002 to March 2006 was “Very Good,” four points per year should have yielded a total of twenty points, not 19.5.
Cumulative Assessment and the Question of Relief
The Court held that these three factors — non-communication of ACR entries despite repeated demands, destruction of service records during pending litigation, and award of fractional points without any policy basis — had to be assessed together. Taken cumulatively, they established that Dr. Saranath had been prejudiced and had not been treated fairly in the matter of her promotion.
On the question of relief, the Court acknowledged the limits imposed by the absence of the service records. Because it had not been able to peruse the ACRs, and because it had drawn an adverse inference against the respondents in that regard, it declined to direct payment of arrears of salary from the notional date of promotion of the six officers who were promoted until the date of Dr. Saranath's superannuation. The argument based on State of Kerala and others v. E.K. Bhaskaran Pillai (C.A. 7953 of 2004, decided on 17 April 2007) — that the principle of “no work no pay” should not be applied mechanically — was noted but not accepted as a basis for salary arrears in the specific facts of this case. The Court held that refixation of pension in the HAG grade would meet the ends of justice.
Order
The Supreme Court set aside the Tribunal's judgment dated 22 May 2007 in OA No. 2612/2006 and the Delhi High Court's judgment dated 9 January 2009 in WP(C) No. 4123/2007. Dr. Saranath is held entitled to notional promotion in HAG grade carrying the pay scale of ₹22,400–24,500 (refixed) in the IRMS. She is entitled to receive pensionary benefits in that grade along with other admissible benefits. The arrears are to be paid within two months of the date of the judgment. The civil appeal was allowed with parties bearing their own costs. The pending interlocutory application was also disposed of.
The judgment was delivered on 26 May 2026 by a division bench of Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar.