UNION OF INDIA THROUGH THE CHIEF POSTMASTER GENERAL Vs. RAJ KUMAR SHARMA SON OF LATE RAM KISHUN THAKUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioners are Union of India and officials of Postal Department posted at Patna. They have moved this Court seeking interference with the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Patna Bench, Patna (hereinafter referred to as "the Tribunal"), dated 28.1.2005 passed in O.A. No. 179 of 2003. By that order the claim of the applicant (respondent herein) that he has been illegally retrenched from working as a labourer on daily wages while his juniors have been retained and granted temporary status, has been accepted and order dated 25.10.2002 issued by the concerned authority rejecting the claim of the applicant for being given temporary status on the ground that he has not completed 240 working days in any of the years of his service has been quashed.

(2.) From the submissions advanced before us it is manifest that only defence of the petitioners is that as per the scheme juniors were granted temporary status because they had pre-requisite of working of more than 240 days as Mazdoor whereas this pre-requisite was not available to the applicant. The Tribunal has considered such defence of the petitioners in detail and has found that the applicant had worked as Mazdoor on daily wages for about 12 years between the year 1988 and 2000 and his claim finds support from certificates issued in his favour by the concerned authorities, which were annexed with the O.A. as Annexure-A/1-a to Annexure-A/1-c. The Tribunal noticed that except verbal denial of the applicant's claim on the ground that he had not worked for 240 days in any years, no material was produced in support of such stand of the authorities. A plea was taken that the records from 13.9.1993 to 26.5.1997 were not available with the authorities. The certificates in question were of the years 1993 and 1995 and clearly no material was produced by the petitioners to doubt the correctness of the certificates issued by competent authorities. The fact that the juniors have been given temporary status was an admitted fact and in such circumstances, the learned Tribunal applied the well settled principle applicable in the case of casual labourers that those who come last must go first. It found that this principle governing retrenchment was not followed in the case of respondent-applicant. In that view of the matter, and also noticing divergent grounds for rejecting the claim of the applicant in different orders passed from time to time, the Tribunal came to the opinion that the order rejecting the applicant's claim had been passed on extraneous reasons and hence it held that the applicant is entitled for the reliefs sought for. After quashing the order dated 25.10.2002 the Tribunal directed to re-engage the applicant as casual Mazdoor and thereafter to pass appropriate orders for conferment of temporary status within a period of two months from the date of receipt of copy of the order and thereafter to consider his case for regularization against available vacant post within a reasonable period.

(3.) Learned counsel for the petitioner has placed reliance upon the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Union of India and Another V/s. Kartick Chandra Mondal and Another, 2010 2 SCC 422in which it has been held that illegal or irregular appointment cannot be justified on the basis of similar appointments made in the past. For this proposition reliance has been placed in that judgment upon a Constitution Bench judgment in the case of Secretary, State of Karnataka and Others V/s. Uma Devi (3) and Others, 2006 4 SCC 1