MEENAKSHI RAI BHATIA Vs. ERNET INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BY this order I propose to dispose of these two applications filed by the petitioner at different stages of this petition. With the petition, the petitioner had filed CM No. 15280/2007. There the following reliefs were sought:

(2.) WHILE issuing notice in the second application i. e. CM no. 179/2008, I had directed respondent No. 3 to maintain status quo. The counsel for respondent No. 3, National Co-operative Development Corporation, states that the original offer of appointment issued to the petitioner makes it clear that in case the petitioner fails to join by the stipulated date, i. e 15 days from the date of issue of letter offering appointment, the offer of appointment shall stand automatically cancelled. He has drawn my attention to the letter dated 26. 07. 2007 issued by his client to the petitioner and in particular, the contents of paragraph 3 thereof where it clearly states that if no reply is received from you or you fail to report for duty by the prescribed time limit, the offer will be treated as cancelled. Thereafter, respondent No. 3 cancelled the appointment of the petitioner by a letter of 1st January, 2008, inter alia, on the ground that the petitioner has failed to report for duty. Copy of this letter has been filed on the record by the petitioner herself along with her application CM No. 179/2008. Counsel for respondent no. 3 further states that this action of his client had been challenged by the petitioner in a substantive writ Petition No. 986/2008. In that petition, the specific prayer of the petitioner was for, a writ of certiorari quashing the action of the respondent, in cancelling the offer of appointment made to the petitioner, being illegal, arbitrarily, malafide, unwarranted and irregular and in violation of the rules, regulations and policies of Constitution of India and consequently the letter dated 1. 01. 2008. It would appear that in that writ petition, while challenging the said order of 1. 01. 2008, the petitioner had also annexed a copy of the aforesaid order passed by me on 7. 01. 2008 in the present petition whereby respondent No. 3 was directed to maintain status quo with regard to the post which was offered to the petitioner. Ultimately that writ petition was dismissed as withdrawn on 6. 02. 2008.

(3.) ONE of the contentions of respondent No. 3 is that, in fact, there is no challenge by the petitioner to its order of 1. 1. 2008 in this petition and hence there can be no question of any interim directions being passed in respect of that order. In this respect, it would be necessary to note that after my aforesaid order of 7. 1. 2008 directing status quo in CM No. 179/2008; the petitioner approached this court in writ petition No. 986/2008 against the aforesaid impugned order dated 1. 01. 2008, cancelling the offer of appointment with a view to avoid any technical hitch and difficulty. There, it was alleged that the action of respondent No. 3 in issuing the order dated 1. 01. 2008 was illegal and mala fide and amounts to over-reaching the court in as much as the respondents knew fully well that an application for stay being CM no. 15280/2007 was pending before the court in this writ petition, and yet they cancelled the offer of appointment in violation of the doctrine of lis pendence. For that reason, the petitioner sought quashing of the order dated 1. 01. 2008 by that writ.