Nurses and paramedical staff appointed by the State of Jammu & Kashmir under SRO No. 384 of 2009 — the "Jammu and Kashmir Medical and Dental Education (Appointment on Academic Arrangement Basis) Rules, 2009" — challenged their exclusion from regularisation under the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Special Provisions) Act, 2010. That Act regularised employees appointed on ad hoc, contractual or consolidated basis but expressly excluded, under Section 3(b), persons appointed on an "academic arrangement" for a fixed term. The High Court, both at the Single Judge and Division Bench stages, upheld the exclusion and dismissed the appellants' writ petitions and intra-court appeals. The appellants approached the Supreme Court by way of civil appeals arising out of SLPs.
The Supreme Court allowed all the appeals and set aside the High Court judgments dated 22nd February, 2023 and 27th December, 2024. The Court declared Section 3(b) of the 2010 Act unconstitutional and violative of Article 14 to the extent it excludes employees appointed on an academic arrangement basis from regularisation despite their fulfilment of the conditions under Section 5 of the Act. The core reasoning was that the "academic arrangement" label under SRO No. 384 of 2009 was substantively identical to contractual appointment under SRO No. 255 of 2003 — Rule 4(1) of both SROs is identically worded, the termination and agreement clauses are pari materia, and the only material difference is an artificial six-year tenure ceiling in the 2009 SRO. The State had merely repackaged a contractual engagement under a new nomenclature to circumvent regularisation obligations, which the Court characterised as conduct unbecoming of a model employer.
The Court held that once the statutory conditions under Section 5(i) to (v) of the 2010 Act are satisfied — appointment against a clear vacancy, continuity on the appointed day, requisite qualifications, no pending disciplinary proceedings, and completion of seven years of service — the nature of the initial engagement ceases to have any legal relevance. The second proviso to Section 5, which protects employees who complete seven years after the appointed day, was given purposive interpretation. Following State of Punjab and Others v. Davinder Singh and Others [2024] 8 SCR 1321 : (2025) 1 SCC 1, the Court applied the two-pronged test of intelligible differentia and rational nexus, finding that Section 3(b) failed both limbs. The State was directed to consider all appellants — and all similarly situated employees — for regularisation under Section 5 within four weeks.