Summary Supreme Court restores Khyber Pakhtunkhwa employees’ seniority, ruling that delays in gazette publication cannot deprive workers of regularisation rights effective from March 7, 2018.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) -The Supreme Court of Pakistan has restored the seniority of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government employees, ruling that workers cannot be deprived of their lawful rights because of administrative delays in publishing regularisation notifications in the official gazette.
The apex court accepted the employees’ appeals and set aside the decision of the Service Tribunal, ordering that their seniority be restored to its original position.
Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar authored the 13-page judgment.
The Supreme Court held that the employees’ regularisation would take effect from March 7, 2018, and ruled that a delay in publishing the relevant notifications in the official gazette could not adversely affect their legal rights.
“The state cannot take advantage of its own administrative mistake,” the court observed, stressing that employees could not be made to suffer because of failures or delays on the part of government authorities.
The judgment held that the delay in gazette publication of the regularisation notifications amounted to an administrative lapse and could not be used to alter the employees’ seniority.
The court ruled that workers could not be deprived of a legal entitlement merely because the administration had failed to complete a procedural requirement on time.
It further held that the date on which a notification was published in the official gazette could not be treated as the sole criterion for determining seniority in the circumstances of the case.
The ruling effectively protects employees from losing seniority because of procedural delays over which they had no control.
Regularisation effective from March 7, 2018
According to the judgment, the employees were regularised under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Employees (Regularization of Services) Act, 2018, with their regularisation taking effect from March 7, 2018.
Regularisation notifications were subsequently issued on August 28 and October 17, 2018.
However, those notifications were not published in the official gazette until August 21, 2024 — several years after the employees had already been treated as regularised.
The Supreme Court concluded that this administrative delay could not retrospectively undermine their seniority.
Seniority lists had recognised employees for years
The judgment noted that seniority lists issued between 2019 and 2023 had placed the employees concerned in senior positions.
The dispute emerged after objections were raised to the 2024 seniority list.
The Service Tribunal subsequently set aside the 2024 seniority list and treated the delay in gazette publication as significant for determining seniority.
The affected employees challenged that decision before the Supreme Court.
The apex court has now overturned the tribunal’s ruling and restored their seniority.
