B.S. BAJWA vs STATE OF PUNJAB — C.A. No. 7605 - 7610/1996

Summary: The Supreme Court dismissed B.S. Bajwa and B.D. Gupta's appeals challenging their seniority in Punjab's PWD department, holding that their writ petition was wrongly entertained due to laches. Although they joined the PWD in 1971-72 and 1972 respectively, they only challenged their junior placement in 1984—over a decade later—when their relative seniority had crystallized and other employees had received promotions based on the established order. The Court set aside both the Single Judge's and Division Bench's judgments, emphasizing that service seniority cannot be reopened after such unreasonable delay, and allowed the counter-appeals of D.P. Bajaj and Jagir Singh. This case analysis is maintained by casestatus.in based on publicly available court records.