State cannot deny regularization to an employee when identically situated persons have been regularized under the same staffing pattern.

Respondent No. 1 was appointed as a Counter Clerk at H.P.S. College, Madhepur, on a temporary basis on 10.11.1982 by the Principal.

The College had recommended the sanction of posts under the state staffing pattern in 1981, which remained pending with the State Government.

Although the Respondent worked for over three decades and was called for an interview in 1997, his services were never regularized.

In 2016, he filed a writ petition seeking absorption and consequential benefits. The learned Single Judge allowed the petition on 30.08.2024, noting that four other similarly situated employees from the same staffing list had already been regularized under prior court orders.

The State of Bihar challenged this via the present intra-court appeal.

1. Whether the learned Single Judge was justified in directing regularization of a temporary appointee against an unsanctioned post where the initial appointment was made by an authority allegedly lacking competence and without following recruitment procedures.

The Court applied the principles governing regularization of public employment established by the Supreme Court in Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi (3) (2006), which prohibits regularization as a mode of recruitment and differentiates between "illegal" and "irregular" appointments.

It further applied the Full Bench ruling of the Patna High Court in Ram Sewak Yadav v. State of Bihar (2013), which holds that illegal appointments made without competitive selection cannot be regularized, whereas irregular appointments to sanctioned posts may be considered as a one-time measure if the employee completed ten years of service.

Crucially, the Court applied the "Principle of Parity" as elucidated in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Arvind Kumar Srivastava (2015), which mandates that identically situated employees must be treated alike to avoid violation of Article 14 of the Constitution.

The Court distinguished the present case from the absolute prohibitions in Uma Devi (3) and Ram Sewak Yadav. It observed that while the State argued the appointment was illegal, the factual matrix revealed that the University had formally recommended the sanction of the Respondent's post as early as 1981 under an approved staffing pattern.

The Bench emphasized that several other employees whose names appeared on the exact same proposal/list and were appointed under identical circumstances had already been regularized by the State through previous judicial interventions (CWJC No. 9215 of 1999 and CWJC No. 20099 of 2016).

The Court reasoned that since the State failed to provide any "intelligible differentia" or valid distinguishing feature to separate the Respondent’s case from those already regularized, denying him the same benefit would amount to impermissible discrimination under Article 14.

It held that the learned Single Judge did not grant relief solely on the length of service but on the established parity with other regularized employees within the same staffing pattern.

The High Court affirmed the direction to the State to treat the Respondent similarly to his counterparts, pass consequential orders, and pay monetary benefits from the date of initial joining. The appeal was dismissed with no infirmity found in the impugned judgment.