Deemed service and final seniority orders can count for promotion eligibility where service rules do not require actual working.

An unchallenged tribunal decision granting merger-based seniority could not later be reopened, so the petitioners were barred from disputing the revised seniority position or its promotional consequences. The Court also treated deemed appointment in Junior Administrative Grade as qualifying approved service for promotion to Senior Administrative Grade, because the service rules required service in the grade after selection and did not insist on actual physical working. On that basis, notional service legally conferred counted towards eligibility, and the promotions based on that service were upheld.

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Issues: (i) whether the petitioners could, in the later round of litigation, challenge the seniority and promotional consequences flowing from the earlier unchallenged tribunal decision directing merger-based seniority; and (ii) whether officers treated as deemed to have been appointed in Junior Administrative Grade from an earlier date could be counted as having rendered the required approved service for promotion to Senior Administrative Grade.

Issue (i): whether the petitioners could, in the later round of litigation, challenge the seniority and promotional consequences flowing from the earlier unchallenged tribunal decision directing merger-based seniority.

Analysis: The earlier tribunal judgment had upheld the merger order and directed that officers in Grade-II be treated as holding Junior Administrative Grade from the retrospectively fixed date. That decision was not challenged and attained finality. The petitioners had also accepted the seniority list prepared in implementation of that decision. In these circumstances, the petitioners were barred from re-agitating the merger, the revised seniority position, or the promotional consequences that followed from the binding earlier adjudication.

Conclusion: The challenge to the merger-based seniority and its consequences was not open to the petitioners and failed.

Issue (ii): whether officers treated as deemed to have been appointed in Junior Administrative Grade from an earlier date could be counted as having rendered the required approved service for promotion to Senior Administrative Grade.

Analysis: The governing rules defined approved service by reference to service rendered in the grade after selection, and did not require the employee to have actually worked in the grade in the narrow sense contended for by the petitioners. Reading an additional word such as "actual" into the definition was impermissible. Since the officers concerned were deemed to have been in Junior Administrative Grade from 1 January 1986 and the DPC met only in 1998, they had completed the requisite period of approved service under the applicable rules and were validly considered for promotion. The Court also relied on the principle that notional or deemed service, where legally conferred, counts for eligibility when the rule does not exclude it.

Conclusion: The deemed service counted towards eligibility, and the promotions based on that service were valid.

Final Conclusion: The petitions were devoid of merit because the earlier merger and seniority determination had become final, and the impugned promotions were made on a legally sustainable interpretation of approved service under the service rules.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a rule defines approved service by reference to service in the grade and does not insist on actual physical working, deemed or notional service conferred by a valid binding order counts toward promotional eligibility, and an unchallenged final judgment determining seniority cannot later be collaterally attacked.

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