Law of seniority promation and ad-hoc service

The book has been divide into three parts - (1) Seniority; (2) Promotion; and (3) Ad-hoc Service.

Seniority, basically, is regulated by rules and executive orders issued by the Government. However, there are certain fundamental principles laid down by the Hon'ble Supreme Court which are of general application, such as, date of confirmation cannot be basis for determining seniority or where there are no rules, the length of service will be the guiding factor. The Authors have taken great pains to cull out these principles from the Court judgments delivered in the span of over fifty years, analysed them and presented them in a useful form. As regards Government orders, so far as Central Civil Services are concerned, the Government of India have issued executive orders from time to time to regulate seniority. In December, 1959, General Principles for Determining Seniority were formulated. On July 3, 1986, Consolidated Orders on Seniority were issued. The Central Government orders issued from time to time have been included in the book appropriately..
On Promotion, also, the Supreme Court have laid down certain principles which are of fundamental nature. These have been discussed in the Chapter 'Basic Principles for General Application'. On April 10, 1989, the Government of India issued Consolidated Guidelines for the DPCS applicable to Central Civil Services. These Guidelines have been dealt with in detail, and annotated properly, and presented in a useful form. In addition, Chapters have been given on Recruitment Rules, Quota and Rota, Consultations with Public Service Commissions, the Select List and making Appointments. Reservation in the matter of promotion have been dealt with in a separate Chapter. Two chapters have also been devoted to Sealed Cover Procedure, and Promotion when some penalty has been imposed.
Ad-hoc Appointments are resorted to exceptionally where it is not possible to make appointment according to the rules. The Central Government have issued instructions that ad-hoc arrangements be made in exceptional situations only and they should end as early as possible. Prolonged ad-hoc appointments create complicated problems of regularisation and seniority. The Supreme Court have addressed themselves to this problem also. In the Constitution Bench judgment in 'Direct Recruit Class II Engg. Officers' Assn. case (1990)' the Hon'ble Court prescribed valuable principles which have been the beacon light since then and have stood the test of time. We have analysed position of ad-hoc employees in the light of Court judgments and the Government Instructions issued on the subject. We hope that these will be found very useful by the Government Departments and the employees.