ALPHONSA THEODORE Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner was appointed on 31.3.1983 as the Accounts Clerk in Tiruchirappalli Railway Division and thereafter promoted as Junior Accounts Assistant in the year 1986 and as Accounts Assistant in the year 1989. While she was holding the post of Accounts Assistant in Tiruchirappalli Division, she has requested the Administration for inter-divisional transfer to Palghat Division. Accordingly, she was transferred to Palghat Division by order dated 30.11.1998 to the lower post of Accounts Clerk which is two posts below the post she was holding at the time of transfer.

(2.) According to the petitioner, at the time of her transfer to Palghat Division in 1998, she was regularly holding the post of Accounts Assistant for ten years and was drawing basic pay of Rs.5,750/= in the scale of pay of Rs.5000-150-8000. On her transfer to Palghat as Accounts Clerk, her basic pay was fixed at Rs.4,590/= in the scale of pay of Rs.3050-4590. The petitioner would submit that the transfer to Palghat was highly belated and no longer served her purpose and since the respondents/Administration failed to grant even her pay protection, she sought for retransfer to Trichy Division by request letter dated 1.2.1999. Accordingly, she was re-transferred to Trichy Division by order dated 15.11.1999 and after joining at Trichy Division, she was promoted, on 26.11.2001, as Junior Accounts Assistant in the scale of Rs.4000-6000 and her pay was fixed at Rs.5700+50 as on 26.11.2001. The petitioner would submit that she gave several representations to the first respondent stating that pay protection was not granted to her on her transfer as per rules and even as per the Board Letter No.PCV/96/1/11/23, dated 7.3.2003, as per which her scale of pay should have been revised on notional basis with effect from 1.1.1996 and on actual basis from 19.2.2003, which was not done and by the order dated 15.5.2006, her pay scale was reduced from Rs.5800 as on 1.11.2005 to Rs.5375/=. According to the petitioner, this order of reduction in pay has put her to further loss as the Administration has failed to even protect her pay apart from making her to work two posts below the one, which she was holding in the year 1998 when she was transferred; that in 1998 at the time of her transfer to Palghat Division, she was drawing the pay of Rs.5,750/= as Accounts Assistant in the old scale of pay of Rs.5000-150-8000. Aggrieved by the decision of the Administration to reduce her pay from Rs.5800/= to Rs.5375/=, she preferred O.A.No.434 of 2006 before the Central Administrative Tribunal, Madras Bench praying to quash the said order and consequently to grant her relevant grade with pay protection in the revised scale as per the Railway Establish Rules and orders on the subject and to grant all other attendant and consequential benefits and since the Tribunal has dismissed the said Application, the petitioner has come forward to file this writ petition.

(3.) A detailed counter affidavit has been filed on the part of the respondents/Administration, meting out all the averments/allegations made by the petitioner in her affidavit.