Ramchander vs Union Of India & Ors

Ramchander ......Appellant

Versus

Union of India and others .....Respondents

J U D G M E N T

1. Feeling aggrieved by dismissal of the writ petition filed by

him against the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal,

Jodhpur Bench (for short, "the Tribunal"), which declined his

prayer for quashing the order of his reversion from Group `C' post

to Group `D' post and to direct the competent authority to

regularise his service on Group `C' post, the appellant has filed

this appeal.

2. The appellant joined service as Farash in the Jodhpur Division

of the Northern Railway. After seven years, he was sent on

deputation in the construction organization of the Northern Railway

at Bikaner and was directed to work as a Material Checking Clerk.

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His pay was fixed in the pay scale of Rs.800-1150/-. In 1997, his

service was regularised on Group `D' post. After two years, he was

declared successful in the test conducted for promotion to Group

`C' posts. However, he failed to clear the type test despite

repeated opportunities. As a consequence, the competent authority

passed an order dated 01.07.2002 for reversion of the appellant to

Group `D' post.

3. The appellant challenged the order of reversion in O.A. No.178

of 2002. He also prayed for issue of a direction to the

respondents to regularise his service on Group `C' post in

accordance with the policy framed by the Ministry of Railways,

Government of India. The Tribunal rejected his prayer for quashing

the order of reversion by observing that having failed to clear the

type test within the maximum permissible chances, the appellant is

not entitled to continue on Group `C' post as of right. The

appellant's prayer for issue of a direction to the respondents to

regularise his service was rejected by the Tribunal primarily on

the ground of delay.

4. The writ petition filed by the appellant questioning the order

of the Tribunal was summarily dismissed by the Division Bench of

the High Court by recording the following order:

"The main point urged by the learned counsel for the petitioner is that similarly situated persons were regularised under the Policy of the year 1991, while the petitioner was not given the same benefit. The petitioner

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approached the Central Administrative Tribunal only in August, 2002 and, one of the ground for dismissal of the application before the Central Administrative Tribunal is delay.

We see no infirmity in the decision of the Tribunal that the cause of action with respect to the point of discrimination arose in the year 1993, when similarly situated persons are alleged to have been regularised. The petition is liable to be dismissed on this ground alone."

5. We have heard learned counsel for the parties and carefully

perused the record including the additional documents filed with

the rejoinder affidavit and I.A.No.1 of 2005. In our view, the

High Court committed an error by non-suiting the appellant only on

the ground of belated filing of the application before the

Tribunal. The High Court should have taken note of the fact that

the appellant had not only claimed regularisation on Group `C' post

by asserting that similarly situated persons had been regularised

in service but had also challenged his reversion and the Tribunal

had not dismissed the application on the ground of delay insofar as

his prayer for quashing the order of reversion was concerned. That

apart, we feel that the claim of the appellant for regularisation

of service on Group `C' post deserves to be examined in the light

of the documents filed by him along with the rejoinder affidavit

and I.A. No.1 of 2005.

6. For the reasons stated above, the appeal is allowed, the

impugned order is set aside and the matter is remitted to the High

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Court for disposal of the writ petition on merits. The parties may

file supplementary affidavits and documents before the High Court

within a period of three months.

7. Since the matter is more than 9 years old, we request the High

Court to make an endeavour to dispose of the writ petition as early

as possible but latest within six months from the date of

receipt/production of a copy of this order.

....................................J. (G.S. Singhvi)

....................................J. (Asok Kumar Ganguly)

New Delhi, April 07, 2011.