Item No.- 25 24.08.2026 Court No. 18 Rohan In the High Court at Calcutta Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction Appellate Side WPA 21686 of 2026 Dr. Biswapriya Mandal Versus State of West Bengal & Ors. Mr. Arka Maiti Ms. Ambiya Khatun … for the Petitioner Mr. D. N. Roy, Ld. GP Ms. Aparna Banerjee, Ld. AGP Ms. Soma Chakraborty Mr. Guddu Singh … for the State 1. Affidavit of service as filed is kept on record. 2. The petitioner is aggrieved that he has not been granted Trainee Reserve facility and the Study Leave, for which he had applied. The grounds of rejection of his Trainee Reserve application is that the petitioner was found ineligible for Trainee Reserve (hereinafter, ‘TR’) and refusal of Study Leave on the ground that he had not completed the mandated period of 5 years as on March 31, 2025. 3. The application of the petitioner for Study Leave and TR was made on December 17, 2025 and was rejected on June 23, 2026. 2 4. The first ground of rejection as it appears from the impugned order is that the petitioner was ineligible for TR. The ground of ineligibility, though not spelt out in so many words, has been culled out and agreed by both parties to emanate from the fact that the petitioner had not rendered the qualifying service of having served in rural areas of the State. This is a mandate which has been specified in the notification of June 2, 2015 concerning the TR issue. Rule 3(a)(i) specifies in the first proviso that a minimum period of qualifying service is required for availing the TR facility. This issue has been decided by this Hon’ble Court, though, at the time of argument, Mr. Maiti, learned advocate appearing for the petitioner has considered not to press insofar as the petitioner is concerned. 5. Thus, at this juncture, the petitioner is only praying for Study Leave. 6. The ground of rejection of the Study Leave is that the petitioner has not completed the mandated period of 5 years as on March 31, 2025, since he has completed this 5 years on the date of his application, i.e. on December 17, 2025, having joined service as such on October 29, 2020. 7. This issue has been conclusively decided in W.P.S.T. 126 of 2025 (Dr. Arif Mahammad Vs. The State of 3 West Bengal & Ors.) and in WPA 20182 of 2026 (Sk. Abbas Uddin Vs. The State of West Bengal and others). 8. Both the aforestated decisions held that while granting Study Leave, which is covered exclusively by appendix 5 of the West Bengal Service Rules, the State cannot impart the provisions of the notification of September 2, 2015. Appendix 5 relating to conditions for grant of Study Leave specifies in Rule 1(5) that the Study Leave shall not ordinarily be granted to a Government employee who has rendered less than 5 years service under the Government. There is absolutely no timeline fixed, as has sought to be done by the impugned order herein. The impugned order has imported the provision mentioned in the notification of September 2, 2015. This notification relates exclusively for TR facility and cannot under any circumstances, be extended to the grant of Study Leave. Thus, fixing the cut-off, as on 31st March of a particular year to assess or calculate the tenure of 5 years of a particular incumbent, seems ex facie incorrect and misdirected. 9. In the circumstances aforestated, the order of June 23, 2026 cannot be sustained insofar as Study Leave is concerned. However, to be fair to the impugned order, the same was passed while considering both TR and Study Leave together. 4 10. Since the petitioner has decided to give up the claim for TR, the grant of Study Leave should normally be considered bereft of the notification of June 2, 2015 and without insisting upon the completion of 5 years by March 31, 2025. It is made clear that this concession is made for the purpose of this application only. 11. The petitioner is granted liberty to apply afresh for Study Leave alone with the concerned authority. The concerned authority will dispose of the application for Study Leave without insisting on grant of TR facility or importing the applicable proposition of TR facility to the application for Study Leave. The entire process of considering and issuing the No Objection for the Study Leave will be done within a period of two weeks from the date of receipt of the application by the petitioner. The consent/No Objection Certificate will be issued immediately thereafter to enable the petitioner to pursue higher academics as he has already got admission into the Post Graduate course. 12. With the aforestated direction, the writ petition is disposed of. 13. There shall be no order as to costs. 5 14. Urgent Photostat certified copy of this order, if applied for, be given to the parties upon compliance with all requisite formalities. (Reetobroto Kumar Mitra, J.)