The Delhi High Court has held that service conditions, including those governing probation and training, are not vested rights frozen on the date of a probationer’s entry into service. Such conditions can be altered by subsequent amendments to statutory rules. The Court also clarified that an amendment that regulates the conduct of probationers from the date of its enforcement operates prospectively, even if it applies to individuals who joined service before the amendment was notified.
Thus, a legitimate expectation cannot be claimed against a statutory rule, and a probationer who voluntarily continues training under an amended rule, despite having an option to defer, is bound by its conditions, added the Court.
Accordingly, the High Court ruled that the IFS probationers cannot claim a right to be governed for all purposes by the rules that were prevailing on their date of appointment, irrespective of subsequent valid amendments.
Since the Indian Forest Service (Probation) Amendment Rules, 2023, are applicable to the petitioners because the amendment governs the period of training after its notification, the High Court emphasised that the denial of permission to appear in the Civil Services Examination during the probationary training period does not suffer from arbitrariness or illegality that would warrant interference under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The Division Bench comprising Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Amit Mahajan observed that a probationer does not acquire an immutable or vested right to insist that the regulatory framework must remain unchanged throughout the period of probation. Referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in State of Himachal Pradesh v. Raj Kumar [(2022) SCC OnLine SC 680], the Bench noted that there is no universal rule that vacancies must be filled per the rules existing on the date of their occurrence.
The Bench clarified that a government servant only has a right to be considered for appointment in accordance with the rules in force when the consideration process is undertaken, and observed that the 2023 Amendment was not new or alien to the service; it merely restored the original position that existed for decades under the 1968 Rules. Therefore, its re-introduction did not amount to a retrospective deprivation of any accrued or vested right.
The Bench explained that a rule operates retrospectively only if it expressly provides for it or if it takes away vested rights. The 2023 Amendment does neither. Its application to probationers already in training constitutes prospective operation upon a continuing relationship, not retrospective interference.
The Bench noted that the petitioners had an option to seek deferment of training but consciously elected to continue under the amended rules. Having done so, they could not selectively disown the provisions that they found disadvantageous. The principle that one cannot approbate and reprobate was applied with full force.
The restriction was neither permanent nor punitive, and it is confined to the probationary period and is uniformly applicable to all probationers, added the Bench, while pointing out that the objective of ensuring uninterrupted training, institutional discipline, and optimal use of public resources was rational and not arbitrary.
Briefly, the petitioners are probationers of the Indian Forest Service (IFS) from the 2022 examination batch who commenced their probationary training at the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy (IGNFA) on November 15, 2023, and the core issue revolves around the applicability of the Indian Forest Service (Probation) Amendment Rules, 2023, which were notified on November 23, 2023.
The Indian Forest Service (Probation) Rules, 1968, originally contained a proviso to Rule 8(1) that prohibited probationers from appearing in the Civil Services Examination or other competitive examinations during their training. This prohibition was omitted by an amendment in 2017. On November 23, 2023, after the petitioners had already joined training, the 2023 Amendment was notified, re-introducing the prohibition on appearing for such examinations during the training period.
Thereafter, the petitioners had been selected for the IFS and had also cleared preliminary and main stages of the UPSC Civil Services Examination. Upon the 2023 Amendment’s notification, they made representations to appear in the Civil Services Examination, which were declined. Crucially, an option was provided to probationers to defer or seek exemption from training to appear in the examination, but the petitioners did not avail this option and continued their training.
However, later, the petitioners challenged the applicability of the 2023 Amendment before the Central Administrative Tribunal (Tribunal), which dismissed their applications, holding that the amendment did not take away any vested right.
Appearances:
Advocates Shrey Kapoor, Nishit Agrawal, Kanishka Mittal, and Deepti Rathi, for the Petitioners
Advocates Monika Arora, Debasish Mishra, Shashank Dixit, Kunal Raj, Subhrodeep Saha, Prabhat Kumar, Anamika Thaku, and Abhinav Verma, for the Respondents
