Employees promoted on a notional basis to a post must be granted regular promotion and consequential benefits from the actual date of assuming charge if similarly situated employees were granted such benefits.

Ajay Mohan Goel, Judge (Oral)

By way of this writ petition, the petitioner has, inter alia, prayed for the following reliefs:-

(i) That an appropriate writ, order or directions may kindly be issued and the Notifications 2026 dated 08.05.2025, Annexure P-5 (colly), may kindly be quashed/modified being arbitrary malafide and illegal by directing the respondents convene DPC from the year 2018 to 2023 and make promotion of the petitioners on actual basis from the dates when the petitioners assumed the charge of the posts of Principals as has been done in similar situated persons as is evident from Annexures P-2 & P-2/T, with all consequential benefits of pay scale, increments, arrears, seniority and the arrears may be ordered to be granted along with interest @ 9% p.a. in the interest of law and justice.

(ii) That writ in the nature of mandamus or an appropriate writ, order or directions may kindly be issued to the respondents to deemed the petitioners promoted on regular basis as Principals with all the actual monetary benefits and the pay scale of the post of Principals (school cadre) from the date when they were given the charge of the posts of Principals (school cadre) alongwith interest in favour of petitioners alongwith interest @ 9% p.a.”

2. The petitioners contend that in terms of Annexure P-5, dated 08.05.2025, when they were promoted on regular basis against the post of Principal (School Cadre), the said promotions were conferred with immediate effect as from the date of the notification and on notional basis from the date the petitioners assumed the charge of the post of Principal on placement basis. The grievance of the petitioners are that they have been discriminated by the Department, as in other cases, incumbents similarly situated as the petitioners, were promoted on regular basis from the date, they assumed the charge of the post of Principal on placement basis.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioners submitted that the reliefs prayed for the petitioners is otherwise squarely covered by the judgment passed by this Court in CWP No. 9321 of 2025, titled Vijay Parmar and others Vs. State of Himachal Pradesh, decided on 06.04.2026, and the petition be disposed of with the direction that the judgment passed therein shall mutatis mutandis be construed to have been passed in the present petition also.

4. Though, the similarity in the issue decided by this Court in Vijay Parmar and others Vs. State of Himachal Pradesh (supra) and the grievance of the petitioners could not be disputed by the learned Additional Advocate General, but, he submitted that the order that may be passed by this Court be subject to the legal rights of the respondents to agitate the same. Ordered accordingly.

5. This petition is disposed of by directing that the directions passed in Vijay Parmar and others Vs. State of Himachal Pradesh (supra), shall be construed to have been passed in the present case also mutatis mutandis. It is held that the act of the respondents-State of conferring the promotion to the petitioners in terms of Annexure P-5, dated 08.05.2025 on regular basis with immediate effect and on notional basis from the date, they assumed the charge of the post of Principal on placement basis is bad and it is directed that the petitioners shall be conferred the benefit of regularization, as was conferred to their counter-parts from the date of assuming the charge of the post i.e., from the actual date of the petitioners joining as Principal on placement basis with all consequential benefits.

6. Pending miscellaneous application(s), if any, also stand disposed of accordingly.