Precedent – Benefit of Judgements in rem affirmed by Supreme Court should enure to all similarly situated persons and it is impermissible for High Court to reopen such issues which are conclusively determined by previous judgements.

The U.P. State Cement Corporation Limited (for short, ‘the Corporation’) was wound up on 8th December, 1999. In the State of U.P. existed a set of rules, namely, the Uttar Pradesh Absorption of Retrenched Employees of Government or Public Corporations in Government Service Rules, 1991 (for short, ‘the 1991 Rules’).

After the Corporation was wound up, one Mr. Shailendra Kumar Pandey and some others, who were the employees of the Corporation, filed Civil Miscellaneous Writ Petition No. 36644 of 2003, seeking absorption under the aforesaid Rules. The learned Single Judge hearing the writ petition cogitated upon the U.P. Absorption of Retrenched Employees of the State Government/Public Sector Corporation in Government Service (Recession) Rules, 2003 (the 2003 Rules) and, eventually came to hold that the Absorption Rules, 1991 were applicable. This decision was confirmed by the Division Bench of the High Court as well as the Apex Court.

When the matter stood thus, all the affected employees of the Corporation felt relieved, inasmuch as the controversy had travelled to the Apex Court and was put to rest. The impugned writ petitions which were preferred in the year 2001 were still pending before the High Court and the expectation of the Petitioners therein was that similar benefits shall enure to them, for the writ petitions instituted on later dates had been disposed.

The Learned single Judge allowed the Writ petitions. However, the Division Bench dismissed the writ petition on the ground that in Mr. Shailendra Kumar Pandey and other cases, the Recession Rules 2003 were not adverted to by the division benches.

In appeal before the Apex Court, allowing the appeal the Court held that there had already been interpretation of 2003 Rules by the learned Single Judge which had been affirmed up to this Court. In such a situation, we really fail to fathom how the Division Bench could have thought of entering into the analysis of the ratio of the earlier judgment and discussion on binding precedents when the controversy had really been put to rest by this Court. The decision rendered by this Court inter se parties was required to be followed in the same fact situation. When the factual matrix was absolutely luminescent and did not require any kind of surgical dissection, there was no necessity to take a different view.