“The petitioner cannot be forced to suffer for the wrongful action of the respondent authorities,” the Jharkhand High Court observed while directing the state government to pay full back wages and service benefits to a Road Construction Department employee who remained out of service for more than six years following an illegal termination.
The ruling came as the culmination of nearly nine years of litigation for Amresh Kumar Jha, whose prolonged legal battle underscores the human cost of unlawful administrative decisions.
Jha’s journey through the legal system is a story of persistence against administrative resistance. A daily-wage worker since 1996, he was appointed to a sanctioned post in 2000 and steadily rose through the ranks.
His service was confirmed, his records were regularly verified, and he even cleared departmental examinations. Then came a sudden setback.
In 2017, after serving the department for nearly two decades, Jha was terminated following an inquiry into the validity of his appointment. The dismissal effectively cut off his family’s source of income overnight.
He challenged the order before the Jharkhand High Court, which quashed his termination in March 2021 and directed his reinstatement. But the battle was far from over.
The state government challenged the verdict before a Division Bench, lost again, and then carried the matter to the Supreme Court. In November 2023, the apex court also dismissed the state’s challenge, effectively affirming the High Court’s findings.
Yet, even after exhausting all legal remedies, the authorities did not fully restore Jha’s rights.
Though reinstated later that month, the government declared the entire period between his termination and reinstatement—from November 13, 2017, to November 24, 2023—as “No Work, No Pay,” denying him salary arrears, annual increments, and other consequential service benefits.
Forced into another round of litigation, Jha once again approached the High Court.
The Bench of Justice Deepak Roshan held that once a termination order is declared illegal and quashed, it is deemed never to have existed in the employee’s service career. The Bench ruled that an employee wrongfully kept out of service cannot be denied wages merely because he could not perform duties that the employer itself prevented him from discharging.
In a significant observation, the court relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Deepali Gundu Surwase v. Kranti Junior Adhyapak Mahavidyalaya, which recognised the human consequences of illegal termination.
It noted that the loss of employment affects not only the employee but the entire family, disrupting livelihood, children’s education, and financial security. The court also found that Jha’s assertion that he remained unemployed throughout the period was never disputed by the state.
Holding the invocation of the “No Work, No Pay” principle legally unsustainable, the High Court quashed the government’s order and directed the authorities to treat the entire intervening period as time spent on duty.
Justice Roshan ordered the state to pay Jha full back wages along with all consequential service benefits within twelve weeks, reaffirming that the burden of an employer’s unlawful action cannot be shifted onto an innocent employee.
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