CHUNNI LAL Vs. UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HE petitioner was appointed as a peon on 16. 5. 75 and promoted as a Lab attendant in the Department of Physics in Ramjas College on 12. 10. 1976. He was further promoted as Senior Lab Assistant (new designation lab Assistant) on 27. 02. 1980. In the Department of Physics, a post of a technical Assistant was created in the year 1991. A meeting of the Departmental promotion Committee ( hereafter D. P. C) was held on 7. 9. 1991 in which one Mr. S. C. Jha was appointed by selection. Other candidates for this post besides the petitioner included one Mr. Bhim Sen, respondent No. 3. The promotion of Mr. S. C. Jha could not come through and he could not take charge of the post in view of certain interim orders passed in a writ petition filed in this court and subsequently, the said Mr. S. C. Jha unfortunately expired. The post, therefore, of Technical Assistant in the Physics Department of the Ramjas college/respondent No. 2 remained unfilled and a fresh D. P. C was therefore called for filling up the said post again for the first time. Fresh D. P. C meeting was held on 19. 12. 1996 in which the case of the petitioner was also considered for the selection post of a Technical Assistant. The D. P. C on consideration, decided to grant promotion to the respondent No. 3. The petitioner appeared before the D. P. C, but as stated above, the D. P. C. thought it fit to recommend respondent No. 3 for promotion. The petitioner was informed that respondent No. 3 took charge on 20. 11. 1997. No interim orders were passed in this case.

(2.) THE contention of Mr. Ashok Aggarwal, counsel for the petitioner is that there are various posts of Technical Assistants in separate disciplines/subjects of Chemistry, Physics and Botany etc. and there should be consequently grouping of all the posts of Technical Assistants in the separate subjects/disciplines and on so grouping, it would be come possible to apply the reservation policy for Scheduled Castes/scheduled Tribes. According to Mr aggarwal this was bound to be done as so stated in the Government of India OM no. 8/1/74 dated 20. 12. 1974 which has been filed by the petitioner as Annexure z, page 58 to the writ petition. Para 5. 1 of the said O. M being relied upon by the counsel for the petitioner is reproduced hereunder:

(3.) MR. Aggarwal relying on para 5. 1 above has contended that grouping is permissible with respect to the different posts of Technical Assistants in the different disciplines/subjects. I am unable to agree. The said para 5. 1 firstly, deals with grouping of posts by direct recruitment and admittedly in the present case, the post to which promotion is sought for by the petitioner is by promotion and not by direct recruitment. Secondly, it is specifically stated in the aforesaid para 5. 1 that " it is not intended that isolated posts, should be grouped together only with other isolated posts. " Therefore, once separate disciplines/subjects have been treated as separate cadre/isolated posts by the University of Delhi with respect to different disciplines in all its colleges and which has been consistently followed, there is no reason why the posts of Technical Assistant in the separate cadres/subjects/disciplines should be grouped together so as to form one cadre. Mr. Luthra, counsel for the respondent has drawn my attention to the clarification given by the University of Delhi dated 11. 11. 1997 filed as Annexure R-2 to the response of respondent no. 2 wherein it is clarified that the issue with respect to grouping will only apply with respect to the posts of direct recruitment.