Assured Career Progression Is Different From Increment: Allahabad High Court Explains

The Court was hearing a Writ Petition praying for the issuance of Writ of mandamus to the Chief Engineer, Minor Irrigation, Department of Irrigation, Government of U.P., Lucknow and the Executive Engineer, Minor Irrigation Wing, Hapur to sanction for the petitioner’s third assured career progression (ACP).

The bench of Justice J.J. Munir observed, “… ACP is very different from increment…..If a government servant, has already retired from service and becomes entitled to his ACP, a day after his retirement, he too has no right to it. The right to be considered for promotion under the rules has to be judged for a government servant, who is still in harness when the right accrues. Else, there is no such right.”

Brief Facts-

The petitioner, Chandrapal Singh appointed as an Assistant Boring Technician retired as a Junior Engineer in the Minor Irrigation department at Hapur. He received his first ACP after 14 years of service, and his second ACP after 16 years. He was later promoted from Boring Technician to Junior Engineer. The petitioner claims he is entitled to a third ACP, after 26 years of satisfactory service. Despite representing his case to the relevant authorities, he has not received this ACP, while junior employees have.

The Court observed, “An increment by its nature is generically different from ACP. An increment is part of a government servant's pay. It is an accretion to the pay that is earned during the course of employment over the period of one year, subject to good behaviour of the government servant concerned. An increment is a routine accretion, that accrues on regular interval, of which a government servant may be deprived in certain contingencies, such as the imposition of a minor punishment. Therefore, if a government servant works throughout the year, completing the period of time entitling him to increment but retires on the day it would actually be added to his salary, the principle of notionally granting that increment has been evolved by Courts, so as to eschew arbitrariness.”

The Court said that if merely for the reason that a government servant retires on the day, when the increment would have been added to his salary, if he were in service, but is deprived of it due to retirement though he has already earned it over the period of one year, until the day preceding his retirement, he has been held entitled to it notionally by preponderant authority in the High Courts, and, of the final approval of the view by the Supreme Court.

The bench observed, “It is not something provided in the routine, though it does come as an accretion to the emoluments payable at specified intervals. ACP is a device that has been invented by the Government, as the policy maker, to deal with the problem of stagnation of government employees. There are many cadres and posts in government service, where there are no promotional avenues. It is to remove stagnation that the benefit of ACP is given at specified intervals in three instances. It is a substitute for promotion, or so to speak, a kind of promotion itself. The essence of ACP, therefore, is stagnation of a government employee on a particular post with no avenues of promotion that entitles him to it at the end of a particular period of time.”

The Court gave a test to determine who is entitled to an ACP and observed, “that the test about entitlement to an ACP lies in the fact if on the date a government servant demands it, would he be entitled to a consideration for promotion.”

According to the Court, therefore, a government servant, who has already become entitled to promotion, say a few weeks or days before he retires from service and is wrongfully denied consideration, may enforce his right to be notionally considered for promotion. Such a government servant may also enforce his right to receive his ACP if it is a case of stagnation and he is entitled to it under the rules.

Accordingly, the court dismissed the petition.