35 years at SBI, promotion denied: Delhi High Court rejects clerk’s challenge

The Delhi High Court has ruled against a 63-year-old clerk at the State Bank of India (SBI) in a promotion challenge case. Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia dismissed the appeal, stating that an employee who participates in a promotion process cannot challenge it simply because they were unsuccessful.

Vigmal, who began working for the bank in 1983, had claimed that he was denied promotion from a middle management grade scale II to the next level in 2018. The court found that Vigmal failed to prove any wrongdoing or unfairness by the bank in the promotion process. They noted that a plea of mala fides (bad intent) is easy to make but difficult to establish, and that Vigmal did not provide sufficient evidence to prove any malice or material irregularity on the part of the bank.

The court upheld the single judge's order from January 2018, which directed SBI to consider Vigmal's case in the promotional exercise conducted in 2018-19 for back-dated promotion.