New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that personnel of the Indian Air Force do not enjoy an “unqualified right” to leave service midway to take up civilian employment. The court on Wednesday held that prior permission from the competent authority is a substantive precondition rather than a mere formality.
A bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S Chandurkar dismissed an appeal by Corporal Nakhat Singh who had sought a no-objection certificate and premature discharge from the Indian Air Force after being selected as an assistant professor of Hindi by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission. Cpl Singh, who had put in seven years of service, had applied for the civil post following a recruitment advertisement issued in November 2020.
His plea had already been rejected by the Armed Forces Tribunal and the Delhi high court before reaching the apex court.
Permission a privilege, not a right
The bench examined Air Force Order No. 33/2017, which requires personnel to first obtain permission to apply for a civil post before a no-objection certificate can be granted. Clause 7 of the order, the court noted, expressly states that both the permission to apply and the subsequent no-objection certificate are privileges extended by the competent authority, not entitlements that can be claimed as a matter of right.
The judges observed that an airman cannot bypass this first requirement, secure a civilian appointment on his own initiative, and then present the Air Force with a fait accompli, demanding that the permission requirement be waived because he has already been selected. The order’s underlying purpose, the bench said, is directly linked to regulating premature discharges, given that airmen belong to a disciplined force with obligations that civilian employees do not carry.
The judgment reaffirmed that premature discharge of Air Force personnel is governed primarily by Rule 15 of the Air Force Rules, 1969, under which service members do not have an unrestricted entitlement to leave before completing their engagement. Discharge is ordinarily permitted only on completion of the initial period of regular service or under specific conditions laid down separately.
Verdict builds on a 2019 precedent
Wednesday’s ruling reinforces the principle laid down in Amit Kumar Roy vs Union of India (2019), in which a bench led by then Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud held that an enrolled member of the Air Force does not have an unqualified right to depart from service at will, warning that a contrary reading would seriously affect manning levels and operational preparedness. That precedent has since been cited in similar disputes, including a Jammu & Kashmir high court judgment in February this year that upheld the rejection of an airman’s application for a civil post on comparable grounds, even as the court acknowledged the applicant’s personal hardship.
Taken together, the rulings underline that the armed forces retain wide latitude to withhold consent for lateral moves into government service whenever operational readiness is judged to be at stake, leaving personnel with limited legal recourse short of completing their contracted tenure.