Unexplained delay in challenging a rejected seniority claim warrants refusal of Article 226 relief.

The petitioner claimed that her seniority and consequential service and pensionary benefits should be reckoned from her initial engagement as a daily-wage employee, which she stated began on 16 July 1982, rather than from her regularisation in 1992.

After an earlier writ petition, the Court directed the respondents to decide her representation; the representation was rejected on 23 October 2019 on the ground that daily-wage service did not entitle her to seniority from that period.

The petitioner retired in 2021 and filed the present petition in 2026, without challenging the 2019 rejection order.

Whether the petitioner’s claim for seniority and consequential benefits could be considered despite the unexplained delay of more than six years after rejection of her representation.

Whether relief could be granted when the petitioner had not challenged the 2019 order rejecting her representation.

Under Article 226 of the Constitution, writ relief is discretionary, and a petitioner must approach the Court with due diligence and within a reasonable time; an unexplained delay may justify refusal of relief, particularly where the claim is stale or may unsettle settled matters.

In State of Uttaranchal v. Shiv Charan Singh Bhandari, (2013) 12 SCC 179, the Supreme Court reiterated that claims concerning promotion and service benefits must be raised within a reasonable time and that courts may decline to entertain stale claims on grounds of delay and laches, consistent with P.S. Sadasivaswamy v. State of Tamil Nadu and NDMC v. Pan Singh.

The petitioner’s representation had been rejected in October 2019, but she waited until 2026 to institute the present petition and offered no satisfactory explanation for that delay.

The Court also noted that she had not challenged the rejection order and that the claim concerned service dating back several decades.

Applying the principles of delay and laches, the Court considered that entertaining the claim in the absence of exceptional circumstances would be inconsistent with the discretionary nature of Article 226 jurisdiction and could undermine finality.

The writ petition was dismissed in limine on the ground of delay and laches.