DHARAM SINGH Vs. CHAIRMAN, CHANDIGARH HOUSING BOARD, CHANDIGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this writ petition, a direction is sought to the respondent for registering the name of the petitioner for a MIG(II) Type House being an employee of the Chandigarh Housing Board.

(2.) According to the petitioner, he is an employee of the Chandigarh Housing Board, Chandigarh, and is working as a Mortar Mate with it. The letter of his appointment is Annexure P. 1, dated February 25, 1978, wherein, inter alia, he was offered the temporary post of a Mortar Mate in the pay scale of Rs. 110-200 at the rate of Rs. 110/- per month as his initial pay plus usual allowances as may be admissible from time to time in the Chandigarh Housing Board. It was further laid down in paragraph 8 of the appointment letter that he will be on probation for a period of six months. According to him, his probationary period was never extended and, therefore, he will be presumed to have been automatically confirmed as such in the Chandigarh Housing Board. The Housing Board addressed a letter dated April 22., 1982 to the Superintending Engineer and other concerned officers on the subject of the allotment of built up houses to the employees of the Housing Board, vide copy, Annexures P. 3. The Housing Board, then, invited names of the employees on the rolls along with their pay particulars who were in urgent need of the built up houses. The petitioner, accordingly, submitted his application for registration of a house as an employee vide, Annexure P. 5. He also deposited a sum of Rs. 3,000/- for registration. The petitioner was surprised to know that his name was ignored for registration of a house because he was not issued registration number by the respondent despite full compliance of the terms and conditions of the allotment by him.

(3.) During the pendency of this writ petition, he also moved Civil Miscellaneous Application No. 2576 of 1983. There it was stated by him that certain persons whose services were neither regularised nor they were senior to him, were included for registration of the houses, though they were juniors to him and were not entitled to supersede him with regard to the allotment of a built up house by the Board. This, according to the petitioner, amounted to discrimination. In the reply filed on behalf of the respondent to the said Civil Miscellaneous Application, it is stated that shri Lavinder Kumar, who is no doubt junior to the petitioner, was registered against the decision of the Board dated October 25, 1980, in which no such condition was imposed that the employee of the Board must be regular employee. On the other hand, the petitioner never applied for registration against the said decision and applied only against the decision dated October 26, 1982, where he did not fulfil the conditions laid down by the Board for registration. In the return filed on behalf of the Board, through its Chairman, the stand taken is that the appointment letter, Annexure P. 1 was wrongly issued through an oversight and also for want of knowledge of the concerned official. The petitioner was appointed only as Mortar Mate like other Mortal Mates who are on the work-charged establishment and hence, he cannot be treated separately from the other Mortar Mortar Mates. According to the factum, since the petitioner was not a regular employee of the Board, he was not entitled to the benefit of the order dated October 20, 1982, copy Annexure P. 4. However, it was admitted that the petitioner had deposited a sum of Rs. 3,000/- on April 12, 1983, vide Annexure P. 6, as claimed in the writ petition, which is still lying with the Board.