GAURAV SHARMA Vs. STATE OF U.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present Full Bench came to be constituted for determination of the following three issues which stand formulated in the referral order dated 6 April 2017.

(2.) The order of reference itself came to be made in an intra court appeal challenging a judgment of a learned Single Judge dismissing a writ petition following the decision in Arvind Kumar Yadav Vs. U.P. Police Recruitment and Promotion Board Special Appeal No. 762 of 2016 decided on 5 Dec. 2016. Subsequent thereto, the learned Single Judge while considering a batch of writ petitions expressed doubt upon the correctness of the law as declared by the Division Bench in Arvind Kumar Yadav and by an order dated 1 March 2017 referred the matters for consideration to a larger Bench. It was pursuant to the said order that the writ petitions came to be tagged along with the lead special appeal and were placed for consideration before the Division Bench on 6 April 2017.

(3.) During the course of consideration of submissions there came to the fore the issue of an apparent conflict between the decision rendered in Arvind Kumar Yadav and the judgments rendered by two other Division Benches in Pravesh Kumar Vs. State of U.P. and two others Special Appeal Defective No.136 of 2017, decided on 1 March 2017 and Shubham Gupta Vs. Indian Overseas Bank Office, Chennai & Ors Writ Petition No.748( S/B) of 2014. In the referral order the Division Bench noted that while the decision in Shubham Gupta had come to be rendered before Arvind Kumar Yadav, the same had not been noticed therein. Insofar as the decision in Pravesh Kumar is concerned, the same although pronounced subsequent to Arvind Kumar Yadav, the Division Bench had failed to notice the latter judgment. This aspect was noticed in the referral order in the following terms: