1. The present Writ Petition under Article 226 of the Constitution
of India has been instituted assailing the Order dated 06.02.2019
[hereinafter referred to as 'Impugned Order'] passed by the Central
Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi [hereinafter
referred to as 'Tribunal'] in O.A. No. 1313/2016, whereby the
Original Application preferred by the Petitioners, seeking
retrospective regularization and seniority, came to be dismissed. The
Petitioners also question the order dated 17.07.2023 passed in Review
Application No. 98/2021 in the said Original Application, which was
dismissed as withdrawn.
2. The Tribunal, by the Impugned Order, rejected the Original
Application insofar as it related to seniority and retrospective
regularisation on the ground that the claim was highly belated and
barred by limitation. The Tribunal further recorded that the applicants
stood regularised with effect from 30.01.2004 and that no surviving
cause for grant of further relief was made out.
3. The present Writ Petition has been filed in the year 2026. The
challenge to the Impugned Order dated 06.02.2019 is thus after a lapse
of approximately seven years. Even if the date of dismissal of the
Review Application is taken into account, the Writ Petition has been
instituted after a delay of nearly three years.
4. Learned counsel for the Petitioners sought to explain the delay
by submitting that the Petitioners were unaware of the dismissal of the
Original Application, that there were certain difficulties with their
erstwhile counsel, and that the intervening period of the COVID-19
pandemic contributed to the delay. No material has been placed on
record in support of these assertions.
5. The record reflects that the Original Application stood
dismissed in the year 2019, and the Petitioners allowed the said order
to attain finality. The Review Application, which was subsequently
filed in 2021, came to be dismissed as withdrawn on 17.07.2023. The
said order in the Review Application of the Petitioners does not
contain any adjudication on merits and, therefore, the doctrine of
merger has no application in the Present case.
6. The Writ Petition, therefore, seeks to reopen issues which had
attained finality years ago. No satisfactory or cogent explanation has
been furnished for such prolonged inaction. The plea that the
Petitioners were unaware of the dismissal of their own Original
Application is unsupported by any contemporaneous material and
cannot be accepted in proceedings under Article 226 of the
Constitution of India.
7. The reliance placed by the Petitioners on the decision of the
Supreme Court in M.L. Patil v. State of Goa1, urging that the principle
that pension constitutes a continuing cause of action, for advancing
their cause is misconceived. In the said decision, the entitlement to be
treated as continuing in service up to the correct age of superannuation
had been judicially determined, and the issue before the Court was
confined to the grant of consequential pensionary benefits. In the
present case, the foundational claim for retrospective regularisation
from an anterior date was rejected by the Tribunal on the ground of
delay and has remained unassailed for years. The Petitioners cannot,
by seeking consequential pensionary relief, revive a primary claim
which is itself barred by laches.
8. The challenge to the date of regularisation, raised after an
inordinate lapse of time, is ex facie barred by delay and laches. Having
accepted their regularisation effective from 2004, before approaching
the Tribunal in 2016, the Petitioners have by their conduct acquiesced
to the status assigned to them. The attempt to characterise the claim as
a recurring cause by the Petitioners on the basis of pensionary
consequences is misconceived. Pensionary entitlement in the present
2022 INSC 622
case is not an independent right but is wholly dependent upon the
acceptance of the primary claim for retrospective regularisation. Once
the foundational claim is barred by delay, the consequential relief
cannot be invoked to resurrect a stale cause.
9. In exercise of its jurisdiction under Articles 226/227 of the
Constitution of India, this Court does not sit in appeal over findings of
fact recorded by the Tribunal. No jurisdictional error, perversity, or
manifest illegality in the approach adopted by the Tribunal has been
demonstrated. The Tribunal has recorded that the Petitioners stood
regularised with effect from 30.01.2004, and the claim for grant of
seniority and regularisation from 08.02.1988, raised decades after the
relevant events, was rightly held to be belated. The Writ jurisdiction
being discretionary and equitable in nature cannot be invoked to
revive stale and time-barred claims.
10. In view of the aforegoing discussion, there is no ground to
interfere with the Impugned Order passed by the Tribunal.
11. Accordingly, the present Petition, along with pending
applications, stands dismissed.
ANIL KSHETARPAL, J.
AMIT MAHAJAN, J.
FEBRUARY 20, 2026
s.godara/ad
