ALLEM LONGKUMAR Vs. MEDO KERHE TERHUJA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE appellant after regular selection through the Public Service Commission, was holding the post of Compiler under the District Gazetteer Unit with effect from 25th November, 1975.

(2.) THE posts in the District Gazetteer Unit which were originally attached to the Education Department were detached from that department and were attached to the Department of Art & Culture by Notification of 31st October 1974.

(3.) BOTH the respondents were appointed as Distract Cultural Officers subsequent to 1.11.78. For the first tune, in 1991 they challenged, the Notification of 13.7.84 regularising the appellant with effect from 1.11.78, by filing a Writ Petition. Apparently the occasion for the Writ Petition was the promotion of the appellant to the post of Deputy Director and the publication of the provisional seniority list. Prior thereto the appellant had also been promoted as Assistant Director. The High Court has upheld this challenge only on the ground that under a Notification of 12.8.75, when a person is on deputation from one department to another, if he is absorbed in the department where he is on deputation, his seniority will count from the date of his absorption. There is an earlier Office Memorandum of 27.4.67 relating to absorption foom one post, cadre of service to another being governed by a similar provision. Such absorption is subject to Cabinet Approval. In the case, however, of the appellant there was an express Cabinet decision taken, looking to the special circumstances in which the appellant had been appointed as District Cultural Officer on 1.11.78, absorbing him with effect from 1.11.78. This decision had been notified and published in the Government Gazette as far back as in July, 1984. We do not see why a challenge to the regularisation of the appellant with effect from 1.11.78 should have been entertained after a lapse of 7 years from the date of the Notification.