ISLAMABAD: Top court has ruled that the period an employee spends on a contractual appointment can be counted toward pensionary benefits once that employee is later regularized, even though the same contractual period cannot be used to grant retrospective seniority or antedate the employee’s confirmed service record.
A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar delivered the judgment in response to identical twenty-three civil petitions of the Secretary, Schools Education Department, Government of the Punjab, against respondents serving as Senior Headmistress/Deputy District Education Officers (Women, BS-18). The petitions arose from a consolidated judgment of the Punjab Service Tribunal, Lahore, dated 15 July 2025, which had allowed twenty connected service appeals filed by the affected officers.
According to the case background, the respondents had been recommended by the Punjab Public Service Commission for contractual appointment for a period of five years and were posted by the School Education Department vide a joint order dated 12 February 2010. Their services were subsequently regularized through an office order dated 18 August 2012, made effective from 10 September 2011, on advice from the Services and General Administration Department that regularization would take effect immediately rather than retrospectively.
The respondents challenged this, arguing that their initial contractual period from 2010 onward should be counted for seniority, pension, and pay fixation. The Tribunal ruled in their favour on all these points, prompting the Punjab government to invoke jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Representing the petitioners, Additional Advocate General Ms. Samia Khalid argued that the Tribunal had wrongly relied on an earlier judgment that had since been set aside by the Supreme Court, and that it had disregarded the Punjab Regularization of Service Act, 2018, which specifies that regularization takes effect immediately rather than from the date of initial contractual engagement.
Writing for the bench, Justice Mazhar undertook a detailed examination of the Punjab Civil Services Pension Rules and the Civil Service Regulations (CSR), particularly Rule 2.3 and CSR 371-A, both of which extend pensionary credit to temporary or officiating service followed by confirmation. Applying a purposive interpretation and invoking the maxim that no one may take advantage of their own wrong, the Court held that denying pensionary credit to contractual employees who are later regularized, while granting it to temporary employees, would defeat the underlying purpose of these beneficial provisions.
The 10-page verdict in the matter drew support from earlier rulings, including Chairman, Pakistan Railway v. Shah Jahan Shah (PLD 2016 SC 534), and referenced comparable approaches in Indian, British, Canadian, and American pension frameworks.
At the same time, the Court distinguished between counting past service for pension purposes and granting retrospective effect to the appointment itself. It held that backdating seniority, service record, and increments to the contractual period would effectively treat the respondents as civil servants from their initial engagement date, a position inconsistent with established civil service law, and one that could unfairly disadvantage other employees senior to them who had no opportunity to contest the change.
Later, the court converted the petitions into appeals and partially allowed them, upholding the Tribunal’s judgment only to the extent that the contractual service period be counted toward qualifying pensionable service, while setting aside the remaining reliefs concerning seniority, retrospective regularization, and past increments.
