DAVENDER PRASAD VERMA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By way of this,writ petition, the petitioners challenge the Judgment and order dated 30th July, 1999 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench in OA No.2444/93 which was filed by the petitioners herein. By reason of the aforesaid judgment, the OA filed by the petitioners herein was dismissed. The petitioners who were appointed as Storemen with effect from 5th June, 1982 were given promotion as Material Checking Clerk(MCC) with effect from 10th March, 1993 and thereafter they were.reverted back as Storemen vide order dated 9th November, 1993. This order of reversion dated 9th November, 1993, was challenged by the petitioners in the aforesaid OA. The case putforth by the petitioners was that while the petitioners were working as Storemen, some persons who had joined as Storemen later than the petitioners and were junior to them, were promoted as Material Checker(MC) ignoring the rightful claim of the petitioners. The names of these junior persons disclosed by the petitioners were Sh. Bahoram Singh and Sh. Pawan Kumar who were appointed as Storemen on 14th. June, 1982 whereas the petitioners were appointed as Storemen on 5th June, 1982. When the petitioners.. represented against this supersession the respondents realised their mistake and promoted the petitioners as MCC. However, within few months, the petitioners were again reverted as Storemen without any rhyme or reason, whereas the' aforesaid junior persons were still retained as MCCs. The respondents had argued that the.. petitioners were only promoted as provisionally and nobody who was junior to them at the level of MCC, had been continued as such. Letter dated 25th September, 1992 giving them provisional promotion was produced. In taking into consideration the language of this letter dated 25th September, 1992 which mentioned that their promotion was on provisional basis and not regular, the OA filed by the petitioners was dismissed.

(2.) Dealing with the contention of the counsel for the petitioners to the effect that while reverting the petitioners, their juniors were retained, the learned Tribunal observed as under :

(3.) After giving our considered thought to the issue at hand, we are of the opinion that the learned Tribunal has not approached the problem in correct perspective. The learned Tribunal was not right in.. observing that the petitioners did not approach the Tribunal in time raising the grievance of non-promotion as MC in 1986. There was no necessity for the petitioners to approach the learned Tribunal at that, time as the petitioners had made representations to the department which in fact favourably considered those representations by assuaging their grievance, administratively. The documents produced on record before the learned Tribunal amply demonstrate this fact. The Bridge Line Office Lajpat Nagar had forwarded their representations by letter dated 21st January, 1993 with the following recommendation :