SRIKANTA BAIDYA Vs. IDBI BANK LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By the present writ petition the petitioner has, inter alia, prayed for a writ in the nature of mandamus directing the respondents to pay all the financial benefits which he would have been entitled to had he been granted successive promotions from July 2002 onwards, a writ in the nature of prohibition, prohibiting the respondents from withholding the first promotion of the petitioner from July 2002 and the successive other promotions, and for other reliefs.

(2.) The case of the petitioner in short is that when he was working at the IDBI Ltd. which had since been converted to IDBI Bank Ltd. he had been subjected to harassment and humiliation and had been successively deprived of his promotion. Under the scheme of amalgamation of IDBI Ltd. with IDBI Bank Ltd., under Clause 2.11 a protection had been stipulated, inter alia, to the effect that all employees of the transferor bank in service on the effective date shall become employees of the transferee bank on such date without any break or interruption in service and on emoluments, benefits and terms and conditions of service which were not less favourable than those subsisting in the transferor bank. The petitioner who belongs to the Scheduled Caste community, alleges that the promotional exercises conducted by the respondents authorities have been in violation of the said clause. The petitioner has been superceded by at least 2145 junior employees in the rank of Manager and by 787 juniors to the rank of Assistant General Manager. Due to arbitrary actions taken by the respondents, his juniors had been promoted to act as his Reporting Officers and Reviewing Officers.

(3.) On March 23, 1998, the petitioner was promoted to the post of Assistant Manager (A). Subsequently, on December 27, 2000, personal promotion to certain incumbents had been granted and a large number of employees juniors to the petitioner had been granted promotion. On January 05, 2005, Special Recruitment Drive for SCs and STs for different posts in the cadre of officers had been made. By an office circular, dated January 20, 2005, it had been decided to extend the policy of calling number of freshers for interview for filling up the vacancies in the Grade 'D' thrice the number of estimated vacancies as against the existing 1.5 times. However, for promotion to other grades the existing policy of calling fresh candidates in the multiple of 1.5 times of the estimated vacancies still continued.