High Court dismisses petitions challenging regularisation of Covid-era doctors in Nagaland

DIMAPUR — The Gauhati High Court, Kohima Bench, has dismissed two writ petitions—WP(C)/239/2024 and WP(C)/187/2024—that challenged the Nagaland government’s decision to regularise medical officers who were appointed on a temporary basis during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The petitions challenged the state Cabinet’s decision dated August 6, 2024, and a subsequent letter issued by the Health and Family Welfare department on August 20, 2024, to regularise the services of 83 in-service Covid-appointee doctors and 15 contractual in-service doctors through a Departmental Screening Committee.

In WP(C)/239/2024, the petitioners contended that the regularisation process was unconstitutional and illegal, stating that it bypassed the Nagaland Health Service Rules, 2006, which mandate 100% direct recruitment through the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC).

They submitted that the doctors initially appointed during the pandemic in 2020 were engaged on a purely temporary basis through advertisements dated August 4, 2020, and August 24, 2021, with clear disclaimers that the posts were contractual and non-regularisable.

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They further argued that the Special Recruitment Drive (SRD) proposed by the Cabinet in 2022 was never conducted, and instead the State moved to regularise the appointees through a departmental mechanism, depriving other eligible candidates of an opportunity to compete.

However, in a judgement passed on Friday, the court stated that it found “no arbitrariness or illegality in the action of the State respondents” and held that the petitioners lacked locus standi as they failed to establish any legal right under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The Court noted that the petitioners were not in service and were not eligible at the time the Covid appointments were made, nor did they apply for the temporary posts in 2020. Only 3 out of the 58 petitioners were eligible at the relevant point of time but had not applied for the advertised posts. The rest of the petitioners were all students during that period and were not eligible.

“Therefore, the petitioners, who had not participated in the earlier recruitment process, cannot now claim a right of consideration under the present policy decision,” it said.

The court further observed that the petitioners did not challenge the earlier Cabinet decisions of June 23, 2020, and October 11, 2022, which formed the basis of the August 6, 2024, decision, stating that “consequential orders cannot be challenged without challenging the basic order.”

Further, it acknowledged that the Nagaland Health Service Rules, 2006 provide for 100% direct recruitment; however, “the government can frame a policy to recruit in violation of service rules under certain exceptional circumstances,” subject to judicial scrutiny to ensure that it is reasonable, proportionate, and does not violate Article 14 of the Constitution.

“The present case is one such extraordinary situation, as it was the Covid-19 pandemic which compelled the state government to take a policy decision for the SRD. It also cannot be said that the policy decision for an SRD for those medical officers who served during the pandemic is discriminatory or arbitrary,” the court stated.

Dismissing the petition, it ruled that the petitioners are not “similarly situated persons,” as the shortlisted names included only those who are currently in service.

Exclusion from regularisation list

The petitioners in WP(C)/187/2024 are doctors who had also been appointed on a temporary basis during the pandemic but had either resigned, completed their contractual term, or left to pursue further studies before the government’s decision was announced.

They argued that their exclusion from the list of candidates being considered for regularisation was arbitrary, particularly since they had served under similar conditions during the same crisis period. They maintained that the government had not issued any notification or instruction requiring them to remain in service to be considered for future regularisation.

However, the Court upheld the State’s decision to limit eligibility to doctors who continued to remain in service.

Noting that the Cabinet decision clearly outlines that the regularisation process shall consider only those healthcare workers who are still in service, the court said it found no arbitrariness in such classification, especially when the policy was framed as a one-time measure recognising continued service.

Observing that those who had resigned were no longer under departmental control and therefore outside the administrative scope of the regularisation process, it said that the petition “is not maintainable as the petitioners are not aggrieved persons and have no locus standi to file a petition praying for inclusion of their names in the shortlist inasmuch as they are no longer in service and cannot claim regularisation of service.”

Accordingly, the petition was dismissed.