Is a compulsory retirement passed soon after a merit-based promotion susceptible to invalidity?

Paragraph 41Our understanding of the law is this. The proposition that an order of compulsory retirement in public interest is non-punitive does not elevate itself into a mantra which, by its mere invocation, can validate such order and repel all challenges laid to it. Exercise of power, which is non-punitive, nevertheless remains bound by the precincts of a public power. The object of compulsory retirement is to enable the administration to dispense with the services of public servants who, when viewed in the prism of public interest, have been rendered dead wood and, thus, outlived their utility. Either the public servant who is ordered compulsory retirement has, by passage of time, become inefficient to perform the duties and functions entrusted to him or his integrity is doubtful – these are the prime criteria triggering the need for such an order. However, a promotion earned on merits, and not by dint of seniority alone, immediately prior to such order of compulsory retirement being made would, by itself, render the order susceptible to invalidity. This is for the reason that the merit-based promotion, not long ago, would stand as proof of a recent and objective assessment of the entire service record and a finding that the servant is fit for shouldering higher responsibilities, which is irreconcilable with the finding and thus negates the very foundation of the order, namely, that the servant has become dead wood, or is of doubtful integrity, and has outlived his utility. Any order of compulsory retirement partaking the character of a backdoor disciplinary proceeding, clandestinely avoiding the safeguards embodied in Article 311 of the Constitution, would be indefensible.

Paragraph 50As the gradings in his dossiers reflect, the appellant was consistently graded as OUTSTANDING/VERY GOOD right from 1994 till 2008-09. The system changed from ACR to APAR in due course. From 2009-10 onwards, the gradings bore assessment in figures out of a maximum 10. Here too, the appellant never fell below 8 out of 10, except on one occasion and that too on review. A grading of 8+, if considered equivalent to OUTSTANDING, the question of any adverse entry in the APARs may not have arisen. Despite repeated reading, we have not noticed any adverse comment. To repeat, the appellant was found fit for promotion by none other than the UPSC and granted promotion to the post of Joint Secretary barely two months prior to the order of retirement with the approval of the ACC. Such grant of promotion was an unequivocal recognition by the department concerned that the appellant’s service was not only highly satisfactory and meritorious but that he was an officer who should be entrusted higher responsibilities. Having promoted the appellant, barely a couple of months later, the superior officers in the department could not have branded him, so to say, ‘dead wood’ to justify weeding him out in purported public interest. The two actions are mutually destructive and cannot co-exist.