The Supreme Court has accepted the appeals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government employees concerning their seniority and set aside the judgment of the Service Tribunal, observing that the state could not benefit from its own administrative mistake.
SC restores seniority of KP employees
ISLAMABAD, Aug 28 (APP): The Supreme Court has accepted the appeals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government employees concerning their seniority and set aside the judgment of the Service Tribunal, observing that the state could not benefit from its own administrative mistake.
Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar authored a 13-page judgment on the matter, allowing the employees’ appeals and restoring their seniority to its original position.
The Supreme Court directed that the employees’ regularisation would be effective from March 7, 2018, observing that delay in publication of the regularisation notification in the official gazette could not prejudice their rights.
The judgment held that employees could not be penalised for administrative delays and that the state could not take advantage of its own administrative error.
“An employee cannot be made a scapegoat because of administrative inefficiency,” the court observed.
The court noted that the delay in publication of the regularisation notifications in the official gazette was merely an administrative lapse and could not deprive the employees of their accrued legal rights.
It further held that the date of publication of a notification could not be treated as the sole criterion for determining seniority.
The employees had been regularised under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Employees Regularisation of Services Act, 2018, with effect from March 7, 2018.
According to the judgment, regularisation notifications were issued on August 28, and October 17, 2018, while the notifications were published in the official gazette on August 21, 2024.
The relevant employees had continued to be shown as senior in seniority lists issued between 2019 and 2023.
Some employees subsequently challenged the 2024 seniority list, following which the Service Tribunal set it aside and treated the delay in gazette publication as relevant to the determination of seniority.
The Supreme Court, however, ruled that administrative delay in publication of the notifications could not invalidate the regularisation or adversely affect the employees’ seniority rights.
