BHASKARRAY S TRIVEDI Vs. GUJARAT AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Letters Patent Appeal has been directed against the orders of rejection pronounced by the learned single Judge in Special Civil Application No.4388 of 1983 dated January 17 1984

(2.) The appellant-petitioner had approached this Court by way of the said Special Civil Application making a grievance in respect of the fixation of his pay scales. According to him his pay scales should have been fixed in conformity with the criteria prescribed by the University Grants Commission and not according to the University. The stand taken by the respondent was that they are not governed by the University Grants Commission criteria but they have got their own criteria for the fixation of the pay scale. The learned single Judge has firstly taken into consideration the fact that there was a controversy calling upon decision on disputed questions of fact. The learned single Judge was also of the opinion that the dispute between the appellant-petitioner and the respondents regarding the fixation of his pay scale had commenced in July 1975 and that the petitioner has preferred to approach this Court by way of filing the Special Civil Application only in the year 1983. The learned single Judge therefore was of the opinion that the proceedings taken out by the petitioner suffered gross delay. The learned single Judge was not able to countenance the contention raised by the appellant-petitioner in this respect saying that his representations were pending at various stages and therefore he had preferred to wait for the decision on the representations and that therefore he had approached this Court only in the year 1983.

(3.) Learned counsel Mr. Shailesh Brahmbhatt who appears on behalf of the appellant-petitioner has urged that various representations were made and the appellant-petitioner was assured that his representations would be considered. It is also the contention of the learned counsel Mr. Brahmbhatt that hearings were also given and all this procedure adopted by the respondents would go to show that the dispute which was pending between the appellant- petitioner and the respondent was never resolved up to quite a later date. Mr. Brahmbhatt has also invited our attention to Annexure-1 to the affidavit-in-reply which are orders pronounced by the Vice Chancellor dated 7.10.1982 in pursuance of his efforts to convince us that the dispute came to be resolved as late-as in the year 1982 by the above-said orders made by the Vice Chancellor. We are not in a position to accept this explanation coming from learned counsel Mr. Brahmbhatt because as it is evident from the above-said orders made by the Vice-Chancellor dated 7th October -1982 he had preferred to review the whole matter with a view to satisfying his conscience that no injustice was done to the appellant-petitioner but that action was only a gesture in goodwill. The said orders make it abundantly clear that they would not and need not be taken as a starting point for further action. These observations made by the Vice-Chancellor in the concluding portion of the orders dated 7th October 1982 would go to show that the appellant-petitioner has approached quite late on a chapter which according to the Vice Chancellor was a closed one and that he had preferred to examine the entire situation with a view to satisfying his own conscience. Therefore the said orders of the Vice Chancellor dated 7th October 1982 should not be taken as a ground for urging before us that the whole controversy came to a rest only somewhere in October 1982 Learned counsel Mr. JR. Nanavati who appears on behalf of the respondents has pointed out that as a matter of fact such final decisions were required to be taken by the Board of Management and not by the Vice Chancellor. In this situation it further becomes clear that what the Vice Chancellor had done was clearly with a view to satisfying his conscience that the representations being made by the appellant-petitioner are given a quietus. Merely because of these orders the appellant-petitioner would not be in a position to come out of the accusation of gross delay and laches on his part.