Concept of ‘transfer’ versus ‘recruitment by transfer’ and ‘seniority’ versus ‘eligibility’, explained

Supreme Court: Stating that ‘transfer’ and ‘recruitment by transfer’ are entirely two different concepts, the Court said that no doubt transfer can be from one category to another category or within the class if the rule permits interchangeability of the categories within a class but any other transfer both intra category and inter category are in fact, under law is a selection and appointment by way of a transfer from one category to another or from one class to another class or from one service to another.

Explaining further, the Court said that transfer in relation to service simply means a change of a place of employment within an organization. Such transfer being to a similar post in the same cadre and therefore, obviously such a transfer does not result in the termination of his lien in the parent cadre but recruitment by transfer is a different service concept altogether. Once an employee undergoes a transfer by way of a recruitment to a different cadre or to a different service, the employee loses his lien in the parent cadre/service. In that process, there is an induction to a new cadre and sometimes with a different type of duty. Such induction has distinct consequence on the career of the employee different from what would have been the normal course had he continued in the parent service.

The bench of Kurian Joseph and R. Banumathi, JJ also explained the difference between ‘Seniority’ and ‘eligibility’ and said that as far as promotion or recruitment by transfer to a higher category or different service is concerned if the method of promotion is seniority-cum-merit or seniority per se, there is no question of eligible senior being superseded. Other things being equal, senior automatically gets promoted. But in the case of selection based on merit-cum-seniority, it is a settled principle that seniority has to give way to merit. Only if merit being equal senior will get the promotion. It was held that merely because a person is senior, if the senior is not otherwise eligible for consideration as per the rules for promotion, the senior will have to give way to the eligible juniors. [Palure Bhaskar Rao v. P. Ramaseshaiah, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 388, decided on 12.04.2017]