SC On Seniority of Direct Recruits & Compassionate / Special Appointees
Judgment dated 9.0.2026 of the Supreme Court of India in Civil Appeal No.8757 of 2013 of M. Prema Vs. The State of Tamil Nadu and others with connected civil appeals.
Seniority of Direct Recruits & Compassionate Appointees
The TN Service Rules do not provide any standard formula to fix seniority of a regularly appointed Government employee vis-à-vis other appointees who came in the same cadre through different sources. Therefore, their inter se seniority has to be determined as per the applicable Government Orders and Circulars.
The Compassionate appointees were appointed under Rule 48 of the TN Service Rules which vests power in the Governor to deal with the case of any person or the class of persons serving in a civil capacity under the Government of Tamil Nadu for appointment to a service in such manner as may appear to be just and equitable. The Government of Tamil Nadu came out with G.O. dated 14th September 1984 which was issued by the order of the Governor and refers to the Compassionate appointees like S. Prem Kumar and T.A. Kannappa who were taken in service on temporary basis. Under this Government Order, a decision was taken to fix seniority of the Compassionate appointees holding the post of Junior Assistant, Typist or Steno-typist and other persons holding such posts among the seniority of the Direct recruits on the basis of their date of appointment.
This is a basic rule of seniority that a Government employee appointed to a post following the due procedure and in accordance with the rules must rank senior to the appointees who entered in service as a temporary or stopgap measure or were appointed owing to some emergency. In “Direct Recruit Class II Engineering Officers’ Association v. State of Maharashtra & Ors.”6 this Court held that a Direct recruit is entitled to claim seniority from the date of appointment and his seniority cannot be fixed based on the date of his confirmation in service. It further laid down that a Government employee cannot claim seniority from the date of initial appointment if he is a temporary or ad hoc employee and not appointed through the rules rather was a stopgap arrangement. This position in law has continued till date.
There are, though, decisions where this Court has granted benefit of the service rendered by a Government employee on ad hoc or temporary post till the date of regularisation in service, but only for pension purposes (see, “State of Himachal Pradesh and Anr. v. Sheela Devi”7; “S.D. Jayaprakash and Ors. v. Union of India and Ors.”8). This benefit of counting of ad hoc or temporary services is generally extended to the Government employees where the rules provide so, in recognition of their past services. Such benefit has been granted on an understanding that the 6 Direct Recruit Class II Engineering Officers’ Association v. State of Maharashtra & Ors.: (1990) 2 SCC 715 7 State of Himachal Pradesh and Anr. v. Sheela Devi : 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1272 8 S.D. Jayaprakash and Ors. v. Union of India and Ors. : 2025 SCC OnLine SC 973 past valuable services rendered by the Government employees when they were working on ad hoc or temporary basis should not be wiped out completely after they are regularised in service. However, such past services of the Special appointees or for that matter of the Compassionate appointees rendered as ad hoc or temporary employees cannot be counted to accord them seniority over the Direct recruits of 1983 batch.
The Court is, therefore, required to take a practical view of the matter and should not involve itself in forensic examination of every little fact howsoever insignificant it may be. A Court of law must remember that inter se seniority dispute between two sets of employees in the same cadre need not be examined with mathematical precision. Shortly put, except in cases where the Recruitment Rules are clear and provide a methodology for fixing inter se seniority, the norm of counting seniority from the date of regularisation of temporary, ad hoc or Compassionate appointees should be followed to determine their inter-se seniority.
