In a landmark constitutional ruling delivered on 25 April 2026, a Division Bench of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh quashed the Himachal Pradesh Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Government Employees Act, 2024 (Act No. 23 of 2025) in its entirety. The impugned Act had been enacted to neutralise decades of judicial precedent protecting the service benefits of contract and ad hoc employees appointed dehors Recruitment and Promotion Rules. The Court held the Act unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the separation of powers, attacked judicial independence, was manifestly arbitrary under Article 14 of the Constitution, violated the constitutional scheme of public employment under Articles 16 and 309, and exceeded the legislative competence of the State Legislature. The judgment is an authoritative restatement of the limits on legislative power to override judicial decisions and carries significant implications for public employment law across the country.
I. Introduction
The relationship between the Legislature and the Judiciary is one of the most delicate balances in constitutional governance. While Parliament and State Legislatures possess the power to change the law prospectively, and even retrospectively, by removing the factual or legal basis of a judgment, they may not simply declare a judicial verdict “of no effect” or enact legislation whose sole operative purpose is to nullify court orders that remain binding. The High Court of Himachal Pradesh, in a sweeping judgment spanning 278 pages and covering 445 matters, has delivered a definitive ruling on precisely this constitutional boundary.
The occasion was the challenge to the Himachal Pradesh Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Government Employees Act, 2024 (Act No. 23 of 2025), enacted by the HP Legislature ostensibly to regulate the recruitment and service conditions of Government employees. In reality, as the Court found, the Act was a legislative attempt to undo a long and consistent line of judicial authority protecting contract and ad hoc employees of the State from arbitrary denial of service benefits after their regularisation into regular Government service.
The result: the entire legislation was quashed. The State was directed to ensure compliance with prior court judgments within three months. The ruling is a landmark on three distinct but related fronts — the law on legislative competence to override judicial verdicts, the constitutional scheme of public employment, and the doctrine of manifest arbitrariness in service law.
II. Background: Five Decades of Exploitation and Litigation
To appreciate the significance of this judgment, it is necessary to trace the history of Government employment practices in Himachal Pradesh — a history the Division Bench catalogued with forensic precision.
A. The Cycle of Ad Hoc Appointments
From the 1970s onward, successive HP Governments made appointments to public posts on ad hoc, daily wage, and muster roll bases, entirely bypassing the Recruitment and Promotion Rules (R&P Rules) framed under Article 309 of the Constitution. These appointments were driven variously by administrative convenience, political patronage, and the desire to avoid the rigour of open competitive selection through the HP Public Service Commission.
Courts — including the High Court and the Supreme Court — repeatedly intervened. From the early 1980s, the settled position was: (a) such employees, after 90 days of continuous service, were entitled to continuation in service; (b) they could not be removed and replaced by another temporary or contract employee; and (c) they were entitled to salary for vacation periods. The foundational rulings were the Supreme Court’s decisions in Rattan Lal v. State of Haryana [(1985) 4 SCC 43] and State of Haryana v. Piara Singh [(1992) 4 SCC 118].
B. The 89-Day Device — and its Judicial Dismantling
The State’s response to these verdicts was ingenious in its cynicism: instead of making regular appointments, it began appointing employees on “tenure” contracts of exactly 89 days — one day short of the 90-day threshold — followed by artificial breaks of one or two days before re-engagement. The Court noted that such breaks were purely “frictional” in nature, serving no administrative purpose other than to defeat the courts’ protection.
The judiciary was unimpressed. Courts held that where work was available and a post was sanctioned, the frictional breaks could not be used to deprive employees of service protection. Tenure appointees were treated at par with ad hoc employees for all service benefits.
C. Contract Policy and the Regularisation Era
From 1996, the State shifted to a formal “Contract Policy”, making appointments on contractual basis under various policies applicable to different departments. The HP High Court’s Division Bench in the Baldev Singh case crystallised the law: contract employees were entitled to service benefits at par with ad hoc appointees, but the Court had no power to direct regularisation, and the State should not normally make appointments dehors R&P Rules.
Notwithstanding this, the State itself formulated regularisation schemes for contract employees. Upon regularisation, a further round of litigation ensued: could regularised employees count their past contract service for increments and pension? Courts held — in a consistent line from Paras Ram (CWP 850/2010), Sita Ram (LPA 36/2010), and Veena Devi v. HPSEBL (CWP 5400/2014, confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2015) — that past contract service, when followed immediately by regular service without interruption, is to be counted for pensionary qualifying service and increments, but not for seniority. This position was most recently affirmed by the Division Bench in Ram Chand v. State of HP (LPA No. 322 of 2024, decided 02.09.2024).
D. The Legislative Riposte — Act No. 23 of 2025
Faced with binding mandamus from the High Court and the Supreme Court to implement these benefits, the HP Government chose legislative rather than administrative compliance. It enacted the Himachal Pradesh Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Government Employees Act, 2024 (Act No. 23 of 2025). The key provisions:
1. Section 3 — purported to deny service benefits to contract employees appointed on or after 12.12.2003.
2. Sections 5 and 6 — attempted to render prior court-directed benefits ineffective, including withdrawing already-granted reliefs and ordering recoveries.
3. Section 8 — retrospectively amended Column 10 of the R&P Rules by replacing the words “on contract basis” with “regularisation”, purportedly to establish that persons are in “public service” only after formal regularisation.
4. Section 9 — contained savings and transitional provisions that sought to immunise the State’s non-compliance from judicial scrutiny.
The petitioners — numbering in the hundreds, including regularised employees whose service benefits were being withheld or recovered by the State on the basis of the impugned Act — challenged its constitutional validity before the High Court.
III. Issues for Determination
The Division Bench framed the following broad questions for decision:
5. Whether the State Legislature was competent to enact a law that would nullify or render ineffective judicial verdicts of the High Court and the Supreme Court on service benefits of contract employees?
6. Whether the impugned Act violated the constitutional scheme of public employment as set out in Articles 14, 16, and 309 of the Constitution?
7. Whether the Act was manifestly arbitrary within the meaning of Article 14?
8. Whether the retrospective amendment to Column 10 of R&P Rules and the discriminatory cut-off date of 12.12.2003 were constitutionally permissible?
9. Whether the Act could be partially saved by severing the offending provisions?
IV. The Court’s Analysis
A. The Constitutional Limit on Legislative Power to Override Judgments
This was the heart of the matter. The Court acknowledged the well-established proposition that the Legislature has the power to retrospectively amend the law so as to remove the legal basis on which a court has decided a matter — a power recognised in a series of Supreme Court decisions including Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. v. Broach Borough Municipality [(1970) 1 SCC 388] and its progeny. The critical distinction, however, is between:
10. Removing or altering the legal or factual basis of a judgment (permissible), and
11. Merely declaring a judgment to be of no effect or enacting a law whose sole purpose is to nullify a verdict while leaving the underlying law untouched (impermissible).
The Court found, on a careful reading of the Statement of Objects and Reasons, the Preamble, and Sections 3, 5, 6, and 9 of the impugned Act, that the Legislature had done the latter. The Act did not amend any substantive rule of law governing the entitlement of contract employees to service benefits. It simply declared that the courts’ orders granting such benefits would not be implemented, that benefits already granted would be withdrawn, and that amounts paid pursuant to court orders would be recovered. This was not legislation — it was a legislative decree nullifying judicial authority.
“The impugned Act has been enacted to render the judgments of the properly constituted Courts, delivered by such Courts in exercise of its power in a matter before the Courts, ineffective and to give interpretation of law otherwise than as declared by the Courts. Manifest arbitrariness is writ large at the face of it in the impugned Act.” — Para 193
The Court held this struck at two basic features of the Constitution — the Rule of Law and the Independence of the Judiciary — and was therefore beyond the competence of the State Legislature regardless of the width of its powers under Entry 41, List II of the Seventh Schedule.
B. Legislative Incompetence: The Article 309 Paradox
A second and independent ground of unconstitutionality arose from the peculiar structure of the Act itself. Article 309 of the Constitution empowers the Legislature to make laws regulating the recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to “public services and posts” of the State. The operative word is “appointed” — the power is exercisable in respect of persons already in public employment.
Section 8 of the impugned Act, however, introduced the concept of “pre-regularisation engagement” — a category of persons doing public work but deemed not to be in public service until formally regularised. The Court held that such pre-regularisation engagement would fall entirely outside the scope of Article 309, because these persons are not yet in the public service. The Act thus created a category of State employees for whom the Legislature claimed no constitutional authority to legislate, while simultaneously using the Act to deny them court-directed benefits. This was a self-defeating exercise of power.
C. Manifest Arbitrariness — The 12.12.2003 Cut-Off
The Court subjected the Act’s key operative date — 12.12.2003 — to the test of manifest arbitrariness under Article 14 as articulated in Shayara Bano v. Union of India [(2017) 9 SCC 1]. The result was devastating for the State’s case. The Act denied service benefits to contract employees appointed on or after 12.12.2003, while the State continued to honour identical court-directed benefits for pre-2003 contract appointees (as demonstrated by the implementation of judgments in Om Prakash (CWP 7602/2010) and Yashwant Kumar (CWP 8148/2022)).
The irrationality was compounded by the fact that post-12.12.2003 contract appointments were predominantly made through open competitive selection by the HP Public Service Commission under R&P Rules — i.e., they were more regular, not less. Pre-2003 appointments, by contrast, were largely made on policy/patronage basis with compromised eligibility conditions. The Act thus penalised employees who were better-appointed and rewarded those who entered by the backdoor. This was not merely irrational — it was perverse, and the Court so held.
D. The Internal Contradiction of Section 8
The Court further found that the retrospective substitution of “on contract basis” by “regularisation” in Column 10 of the R&P Rules (effected by Section 8) produced an internal contradiction that independently vitiated the Act. Prior contract appointments made in accordance with R&P Rules procedure, being now deemed “direct recruitments” by virtue of the amended Column 10, would paradoxically entitle those appointees to all regular service benefits. Yet Sections 3 and 6 of the same Act denied precisely those benefits. The Act thus worked against its own object and was, on this ground too, arbitrary and liable to be struck down.
E. The Constitutional Scheme of Public Employment
Underlying all the specific findings was the Court’s reaffirmation of a foundational principle: the constitutional scheme of public employment in India, built on Articles 14, 16, 309, 315, and 320, requires that recruitment to public service be made through open competition with due advertisement, conducted by or through a prescribed recruiting agency, and in accordance with rules made under Article 309. This scheme is not merely directory — it is mandatory, and no legislative device can be used to render it nugatory or to create a category of “sub-constitutional” employment that exists outside this framework permanently.
The Court acknowledged the well-known tension between this principle and the reality of widespread irregular employment by the State — a tension addressed by the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench in Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi [(2006) 4 SCC 1]. The resolution of that tension, however, lies in strict adherence to R&P Rules going forward, not in legislative subversion of court orders protecting those already caught in the State’s irregular employment web.
V. On Severability: Why the Entire Act Was Struck Down
The Court carefully examined whether the offending provisions could be severed to save a constitutional core of the Act. The answer was an unequivocal no. After striking down Sections 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 — the substantive operative portions of the Act — nothing of constitutional substance remained. As the Court held at paragraph 201:
“Where it is possible, quashing of entire Act should be avoided by declaring the offending provisions of the Statute unconstitutional. In present case Sections 3, 5 to 9 are in conflict with the Constitutional framework and after declaring these Sections only as unconstitutional, nothing substantial will remain in the remaining provisions and, therefore, we are constrained to declare that entire Legislation (impugned Act) deserves to be quashed and set aside.”
The Act was accordingly quashed in its entirety, root and branch.
VI. The Operative Order and Its Practical Implications
The operative order of the Court (Paragraphs 202–203) has several distinct components:
1. Quashing of the Impugned Act
The HP Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Government Employees Act, 2024 (Act No. 23 of 2025) is quashed and set aside in its entirety. It ceases to have any legal existence from the date of the judgment.
2. Invalidation of Consequential Actions
All consequential actions, omissions, and commissions of the State and its functionaries taken in reliance upon the impugned Act are declared illegal, unconstitutional, and null. This includes orders refusing to grant service benefits, orders withdrawing already-granted benefits, and directions for recovery of amounts paid pursuant to prior court orders.
3. Direction for Compliance within Three Months
The competent State authorities are directed to ensure extension of service benefits in terms of the judgments passed by competent Courts (the entire line of authority from Paras Ram to Ram Chand), by issuing appropriate orders latest by 25.07.2026 — three months from the date of judgment. Non-compliance will expose the State to contempt jurisdiction.
4. Disposal of Execution Petitions and COPCs
The Execution Petitions (EX.PT Nos. 165/248/2024, 176/2023, 29/2025) and Contempt Petitions (COPCs) filed for non-implementation of prior orders are disposed of in the above terms. Fresh execution or contempt proceedings may be initiated if the three-month timeline is not honoured.
VII. Significance and Broader Implications
A. Restatement of Limits on Legislative Override of Judgments
The judgment provides the most thorough judicial treatment in HP High Court jurisprudence of the boundary between permissible retrospective legislation and impermissible nullification of judicial verdicts. It will be an essential reference point in any future challenge to executive or legislative attempts to undo court-directed service benefits — not only in Himachal Pradesh but across India.
B. Strengthening the Principle of Judicial Independence
By finding that the Act constituted an “attack on the independence of the Judiciary” and a “breach of the basic features of the Constitution”, the Court has elevated this principle from a theoretical doctrine to an operative ground for constitutional invalidity of State legislation. Future legislative drafters in HP — and elsewhere — will need to take heed: an Act whose preamble or statement of objects and reasons candidly records that its purpose is to override court judgments will not survive constitutional scrutiny.
C. Service Benefits of Contract Employees: The Settled Position
The judgment restates with clarity the entitlements of regularised contract employees in HP Government service:
12. Past contract service, followed immediately by regular service without interruption, counts for pay increments and pensionary qualifying service.
13. Vacation salary is payable for contract service periods.
14. Seniority from the date of initial contract appointment is not available — seniority counts only from the date of regularisation.
15. There is no right to claim regularisation itself — that remains with the State’s policy-making domain.
16. The principle of ‘last come first go’ applies to removal of irregular appointees where regular vacancies are being filled.
D. Warning to the State as Model Employer
The Court’s repeated invocation of the “model employer” standard is significant. The State cannot simultaneously exploit the economic vulnerability of the educated unemployed by making irregular appointments for years on end, and then deny those employees the minimal protections that decades of judicial effort have secured for them. Where the State has in fact extended these benefits to pre-2003 contract employees, it cannot discriminate against post-2003 employees — especially where the latter were selected through a more rigorous and constitutionally compliant process.
VIII. A Critical Appreciation
The judgment merits admiration for its thoroughness and for its willingness to strike down an entire Act of the Legislature when the constitutional violation permeates every operative section. There is however one observation worth making from a practitioner’s standpoint: the Court, having quashed the Act, directed compliance with prior court judgments “as a whole” within three months. The diversity of the 445+ petitions — spanning different departments, different periods of contract service, different stages of regularisation — means that the three-month compliance direction, while appropriately firm, may in practice require further proceedings before individual authorities and, if necessary, further recourse to this Court.
It would also be worthwhile for the affected employees and their advocates to take proactive steps to document each employee’s entitlements under the specific judgment applicable to their case (e.g., Paras Ram for increment counting, Veena Devi for HPSEB employees, Ram Chand as the most recent Division Bench restatement) and to approach the competent authority with specific representations before the three-month deadline. Prevention is better than contempt — and a well-documented compliance demand places the State squarely on notice.
IX. Conclusion
The HP High Court’s judgment in 2026:HHC:13536 is a constitutional landmark of the first order. It is simultaneously a vindication of the independence of the Judiciary, a reaffirmation of the constitutional scheme of public employment, and a definitive ruling on the limits of legislative power in a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law.
The message from the Division Bench is unambiguous: the State may enact laws, even retrospective ones, to change the legal landscape. What it may not do is enact a law that tells its own employees — and the courts that stood by them — that the judiciary’s verdicts will not be honoured. In the hierarchy of constitutional values, the rule of law and judicial independence occupy a position that no legislative majority, however comfortable, can disturb.
“For discussion herein above, we are of the considered opinion that the entire Act must go to maintain the Rule of Law.” — Para 201, per Vivek Singh Thakur & Romesh Verma JJ.
Key Authorities Referred
Rattan Lal v. State of Haryana, (1985) 4 SCC 43 — Ad hoc appointments; vacation salary entitlement.
State of Haryana v. Piara Singh, (1992) 4 SCC 118 — Deprecation of tenure/89-day device.
Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi, (2006) 4 SCC 1 — Constitutional scheme of public employment; no right to regularisation.
Shayara Bano v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 1 — Doctrine of manifest arbitrariness under Article 14.
Baldev Singh v. State of HP (HP High Court DB) — Contract employees at par with ad hoc employees; ‘last come first go’.
Paras Ram v. State of HP, CWP 850/2010 (HP HC) — Past ad hoc service counted for increments.
Sita Ram v. State of HP, LPA 36/2010 (HP HC DB) — Contract service counted for increments and pension, not seniority.
Veena Devi v. HPSEBL, CWP 5400/2014 (HP HC); SLP dismissed, 2015 — Contract service for qualifying pensionary service.
Ram Chand v. State of HP, LPA No. 322/2024 (HP HC DB, 02.09.2024) — Comprehensive restatement; history of contract employment jurisprudence in HP.
Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. v. Broach Borough Municipality, (1970) 1 SCC 388 — Permissible scope of legislative override of judgments
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