Srinagar, Nov 8, KDC: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has barred Kashmir University (KU) from routinely replacing its contractual faculty with new appointees, calling the practice arbitrary. However, it clarified that the protection won’t apply to short-term or sessional engagements. The court also directed the Bar Council of India to review the Law Department’s faculty strength and suggest necessary measures.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Sanjay Parihar and Justice Sanjeev Kumar delivered the verdict on Friday while hearing a batch of appeals filed by the University of Kashmir against a common judgment passed by a Single Judge. The Single Judge, as per Srinagar-based news agency Kashmir Dot Com (KDC), had earlier directed that contractual teachers engaged by the University be allowed to continue until regular selections were made and restrained the institution from replacing them with another set of contractual appointees.
The Division Bench, while partly modifying the Single Judge’s order, upheld the established principle that an ad hoc, temporary, or contractual appointee cannot be replaced by another similar engagement where the vacancy persists. However, it clarified that the same rule could not be extended to those engaged merely to meet temporary academic needs, such as filling short-term teaching gaps for a particular session.
“The University is not precluded from engaging teachers on academic arrangements to meet emergent or sessional requirements,” the court observed, “but such engagements shall, in the first instance, be offered to the respondents who have already gained requisite experience by rendering their services in earlier sessions.” The court cautioned the University against any “manipulation or machination to substitute the respondents by making similar arrangements under a different nomenclature,” stating that such tactics would defeat both fairness and consistency in employment practices.
While acknowledging the University’s administrative discretion to hire faculty on need-based academic arrangements, the Bench stressed that these powers cannot be used to perpetuate instability or deny continuity to those already experienced in the same departments. It held that the respondents’ right to fair consideration stemmed not from any claim to permanency but from the fundamental rule of non-arbitrary treatment by the employer.
Particular attention was drawn to the Faculty of Law, where the court noted a persistent shortage of core faculty despite the University’s compliance with minimum norms set by the Bar Council of India (BCI). It recorded that while the University had advertised twelve academic arrangement posts in 2023, only three substantive positions had been formally notified for regular recruitment. The Bench directed that the judgment be placed before the BCI, which must “immediately and forthwith visit the University of Kashmir, assess the requirement of core faculty to run the three-year and five-year law courses, and issue requisite directions including creation of posts, if any, required.”
Quoting from the judgment, the court observed: “An ad hoc, temporary, or contractual appointee cannot be replaced by a similar arrangement for every academic session and such appointees are entitled to continue till the posts against which such appointees have been engaged are filled up through a regular selection process.” It further added, “Part-time and visiting faculty cannot be a substitute either for core faculty or for whole-time contractual/academic arrangement faculty.”
The appeals decided together include LPA No. 169/2025 (University of Kashmir & Others v. Saba Manzoor & Others) and connected matters such as LPA Nos. 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 212–219 of 2025. The University of Kashmir was represented by Senior Advocate Syed Faisal Qadri with advocates Asif Maqbool, Sikander Hayat Khan, and Numan Zargar, while the respondents were represented by Senior Advocate Jahangir Iqbal Ganai with Omais Kawoosa; Advocate Owais Shafi; Advocate Arif Sikander Mir; and Advocate Sheikh Mushtaq in their respective appeals. The judgment was reserved on October 28 and pronounced on November 7, 2025. (KDC)
