Article 14 does not envisage negative equality to perpetuate illegal appointments made against unsanctioned posts.

The petitioners were appointed as Plumbers in the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) in December 1994 on a temporary basis following a court direction in a previous writ

Their services were terminated on 31.12.2001 (or 15.01.2002) on the grounds that they were appointed after the government’s cut-off date (23.10.1986/11.12.1990) and were working against unsanctioned posts

Following a Division Bench direction in 2006 (Ram Tapeshwar Sah case), a high-level committee reviewed their claims but rejected them via Memo No. 261 dated 14.04.2009

The petitioners challenged this rejection in 2013, seeking reinstatement and consequential benefits, citing that similarly situated employees had been regularized

During the pendency of the petition, the petitioners reached the age of superannuation in 2018

1. Whether the petitioners are entitled to reinstatement and regularization based on the principle of parity with other supposedly similarly situated employees

2. Whether an appointment made against an unsanctioned post after the prescribed cut-off date can be regularized or protected under Article 14

The court primarily applied the principle from Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi (3), which prohibits the regularization of illegal appointments made contrary to Article 14 and without a competitive selection process

It relied on State of Orissa v. Mamata Mohanty, which established that Article 14 does not envisage "negative equality" (perpetuating an illegality just because others received a benefit) and that an order bad at its inception cannot be sanctified later

It further applied the Full Bench ruling in Ram Sewak Yadav v. State of Bihar, holding that appointments void ab-initio cannot be regularized

distinguished Mobina Khatoon v. State of Bihar, noting that pensionary benefits require at least 10 years of continuous service

The court found that the petitioners’ initial appointment in 1994 was inherently flawed because no sanctioned posts for Plumbers existed in the PHED until 2005

Consequently, the appointment was made against unsanctioned posts and after the government's cut-off date for regularizing work-charged employees

Regarding the petitioners' claim of discrimination (parity), the court reasoned that under the Mamata Mohanty precedent, the petitioners cannot claim "negative equality"; even if others were wrongly reinstated, the law does not permit the court to mandate a second illegality

Furthermore, the court noted a significant, unexplained delay of four years in challenging the 2009 rejection order

Since the petitioners only served for approximately seven years before termination, they also failed to meet the ten-year threshold required for pensionary benefits under the Mobina Khatoon guidelines

The court dismissed the writ petition, finding no illegality in the impugned order (Memo No. 261) and refusing to grant any relief or retiral benefits. All pending applications were disposed of