DEBAJIT DAS Vs. STATE OF ASSAM AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) APPELLANT was appointed as Assistant Engineer(AE) in the year 1996 and he was promoted to the post of Assistant Executive Engineer(AEE) in the month of December, 2002 along with respondent 9 to 12 in this appeal. Appellant was promoted as excadre Executive Engineer(EE) and he was encadred as EE by virtue of his selection on 27.7.2005. Appellant continued to work as EE since the date of his encadrement. There was selection for the post of Superintending Engineer(SE). There were six de -reserved vacancies of SE. Four more posts of SE fell vacant. That apart one DN Bhattacharyya retired as Additional Chief Engineer(ACE) and to his post Ajit Kr Kakati who was working as SE was promoted. There were departmental proceedings against one Jiauddin Ahmed who was working as SE and he was ultimately imposed the punishment of compulsory retirement. One Kamakhya Prasad Bezbaruah who was working as SE was sent on deputation to National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for a period of five years. The deputation period was to expire in October, 2013 but the NHAI made a request to the state government that as a special case his deputation be extended to two more years that is till October, 2015. Hence the total number of vacancy according to the selection committee was 13. As per the norms fifty -two persons who were working as EEs were considered. The appellant was one of those persons whose name was considered and was eventually promoted as SE.

(2.) THE petitioner in WP(C) 2958/2014 is the respondent 12 in this appeal. Petitioner 1 in WP(C) 7/2013 is dead and the second petitioner Chandan Sarma withdrew himself from the writ petition thereby the writ petition had became infructuous before the learned Single Judge. Respondent 13 is the Assam PWD Engineers' Service Association(who will hereinafter be referred to as Association for the sake of brevity).

(3.) THE Association had made a representation to the government that the appellant's excadre appointment and encadre appointment to the post of EE is illegal and contrary to the rules and also his selection to the post of SE is illegal. Upon the representation of the Association the government has constituted an inquiry committee headed by the Additional Chief Secretary of the Personnel department. Inquiry was held and recommendation made to demote the appellant. When the government was about to pass the order of his demotion from the post of SE the appellant filed a writ petition [WP(C) 5/2015]. Eventually, the government passed an order directing the appellant to be demoted to the post of ex -cadre EE during the pendency of the writ petitions. The learned Single Judge clubbed all the writ petitions for hearing and ultimately held that -