Contract’s Constitutional Duplicity Exposed: SC Enjoins IIIT-Allahabad to Regularize Professor After Decade-Plus Dispute

(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)

A recruitment advertisement for regular posts. A qualified candidate. A selection committee that interviewed him. And then inexplicably, and without a single reason recorded on file a contractual appointment in place of the permanent post he had applied and competed for. It took thirteen years, multiple rounds of litigation, and ultimately the intervention of the Supreme Court of India to identify what the apex court has now declared in unambiguous terms it was patently illegal and unconstitutional from the very beginning.

The Bench and the Verdict

A bench comprising Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice S.V.N. Bhatti delivered the ruling on Wednesday, May 13, allowing an appeal filed by an Assistant Professor who had been granted a contractual appointment later revoked against a regular job advertisement for teaching posts at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad

The Court directed the institute to issue him a regular appointment as Assistant Professor within four weeks, with continuity of service, though without financial benefits for the intervening period

The judgment, authored by Justice Bhatti, is one that carries consequences far beyond the individual facts of this case for it draws a firm constitutional line between the letter of a recruitment process and the spirit in which it must be conducted.

The Constitutional Question at the Heart of the Case

The Supreme Court held that appointing a candidate on a contractual basis against an advertisement issued for regular vacancies is patently illegal and unconstitutional when no reasons are recorded for such differential treatment.

That finding is of considerable jurisprudential significance. It is not merely a ruling about one professor at one institution. It is a declaration that the constitutional guarantees enshrined in Articles 14 and 16 the rights to equality before the law and equal opportunity in public employment are not honoured merely by conducting a selection process.

They demand that the outcome of that process be applied uniformly and without arbitrary distinction among candidates who stand in materially similar positions.

The Facts: A Recruitment Process That Produced Two Classes of Candidate

The dispute had its origins in an advertisement issued in January 2013 by IIIT-Allahabad for regular faculty positions across Pay Band-IV and Pay Band-III.

The appellant, Lokendra Kumar Tiwari, applied for the post of Assistant Professor in the Information Security and MSCLIS stream a domain in which his academic credentials were, by any objective standard, substantial.

His qualifications included a Ph.D. in Information Security from the University of Allahabad, a first-division M.S. in Cyber Law and Information Security from IIIT-Allahabad itself achieved with a CGPA of 9.02 out of 10 along with teaching experience at Ewing Christian College and prior guest faculty work at the very institution that was now recruiting him.

The Selection Committee conducted interviews on March 18, 2013. Of the candidates who appeared, thirteen were recommended for regular appointments. Tiwari and one other candidate were recommended only for contractual appointments of twelve months’ duration at a fixed salary of ₹40,000 per month.

No reason was recorded for this distinction. No deficiency in qualification was identified. No explanation was offered for why two candidates were carved out of a regular recruitment process and offered contractual terms instead.

The file was silent and that silence, the Supreme Court has now found, was constitutionally deafening.

The Procedural Journey: A Decade of Institutional Resistance

All appointments were subsequently cancelled in March 2014, triggering litigation before the Allahabad High Court. Although earlier writ petitions resulted in a direction for reconsideration, the institute again issued only a contractual appointment to Tiwari in 2017.

His challenges before the Single Judge and thereafter before the Division Bench of the High Court both failed primarily on the ground that he had accepted the contractual appointment without formal protest and had continued to work under those terms

It was an argument that, in effect, penalised an employee for having no practical alternative but to accept what was offered — an approach that the Supreme Court has now firmly rejected.

The Supreme Court’s Analysis: Regularisation vs. Constitutional Violation

The judicial reasoning in this case turns on a distinction of fundamental importance. The Court was emphatic that what was before it was not the familiar question of whether a long-serving contractual employee ought to be regularised a category of case governed by its own well-established jurisprudence.

The Court held that the issue was not about regularisation of a contractual employee, but about the legality of offering a contractual appointment through a recruitment process meant exclusively for regular vacancies.

The institution had advertised for regular posts. It had conducted a regular selection process. It had found Tiwari qualified. And then without explanation it had converted his appointment into something qualitatively different from what the advertisement promised and what his fellow candidates received.

That conversion, the Court found, was not a discretionary administrative decision. It was a constitutional infraction.

The Court observed that although Tiwari possessed the requisite qualifications prescribed in the advertisement for a regular post, he was denied regular appointment despite the recruitment being conducted for regular vacancies and that this amounted to a violation of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution, as other similarly situated candidates were offered regular posts.

The Court further noted pointedly that the record disclosed no reason whatsoever for denying the post for which the appellant had been shortlisted and interviewed and that when the institute was called upon to justify this differential treatment, it was unable to do so.

The Ruling: What the Supreme Court Ordered

The appeal was allowed. The impugned orders of the High Court were set aside. The institute was directed to issue Tiwari a regular appointment as Assistant Professor within four weeks, with continuity of service for the purposes of seniority and service benefits, though financial benefits for the intervening period were not granted.

Why This Judgment Matters: The Broader Constitutional Principle

The ruling in Lokendra Kumar Tiwari v. Union of India & Others carries a message that public institutions engaged in recruitment would do well to internalise. The constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity in public employment is not discharged by the mere act of advertising and interviewing.

It demands that the fruits of a recruitment process — the appointments that flow from it be distributed on a principled and documented basis, without arbitrary distinctions between candidates who have met the same advertised criteria.

Appearances:

For Appellant(s) Mr. Sudhir Kumar Saxena, Sr. Adv. (argued by) Mr. Aviral Saxena, AOR Abhinav Sharma, Adv Mr. Paritosh Goyal, Adv

For respondent(s) Mr Sanyat Lodha, AOR (Argued by) Ms Lakshita Jain Adv

When an institution advertises for regular posts, conducts regular interviews, and then silently converts some candidates’ appointments to contractual terms while granting others permanent positions, it does not merely bend administrative procedure. It fractures the constitutional compact that every public employer owes to every person who enters a competitive selection process in good faith.

That, the Supreme Court has now held, will not stand.

Case Title: Lokendra Kumar Tiwari v. Union of India and Others || Bench: Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice S.V.N. Bhatti