C.RAJU Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner herein was the applicant before the Tribunal. The petitioner was an ED Agent, who was appointed in the year 1973. There was a procedure for absorption of ED Agents to Group D services in the Postal Department. For quite a long time there was a flux in the matter of absorption, insofar as the Department having fixed an upper age limit for such regularization, which was interfered with by the Tribunal. Later, a Division Bench of this Court had conceded the power to the Department to prescribe an upper age limit by suitable amendments to the Rule or even by executive orders. The Rules were amended, making a fixation of upper age. The petitioner's case is before that and he was not regularized more by reason of the upper age not being prescribed. Even persons above the age of 50 were absorbed in the regular service of the Department.

(2.) While continuing as an ED Agent, the petitioner approached the Tribunal claiming that he ought to have been regularized in Group-D in one of the vacancies which arose in 2002. The Tribunal declared that he is entitled to be considered for a vacancy in 2002 and also directed such consideration notionally for the purpose of reckoning of pension. It was also directed that he should be given seniority from the date on which his next junior was so regularized.

(3.) The order of the Tribunal was affirmed by a Division Bench of this Court in a writ petition filed by the Department, which is produced as Annexure A-3. The petitioner's right to be considered in a vacancy of the year 2002 was affirmed and it was noticed that consideration was unduly delayed by the Department. The Department, in purported compliance of the judgment of this Court and the Tribunal, passed an order dated 17.07.2010, almost three years after the judgment of this Court in 2007. The regularization was made in a vacancy arising in the year 2004; not 2002 as directed by the Tribunal.