INSTITUTE OF ADVANCE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, GANDHI VIDYA MANDIR, SARDARSHAHAR, DISTRICT CHURU Vs. PRADEEP KUMAR SHARMA S/O AMARCHAND SHARMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present appeals assail a common order dated 19.7.2016 allowing three separate writ petitions setting aside individual orders for transfer each dated 17.5.2016 by which the Respondents have been transferred from Churu in Rajasthan to Bemetara in Chattisgarh.

(2.) Learned Counsel for the Appellants submitted that transfer and posting are incidence of service. The fact that the order of transfer may have followed immediately after seizure of the computers of the Respondents will not make it punitive in nature. The transfers were ordered in administrative exigency according to the needs of the Appellants. The office atmosphere was vitiated on account of complaints against the Respondents and some others by the students pursuing distance education details of which were spelt out in the counter affidavit. If transfer was ordered in interest of discipline it cannot be termed punitive. That there were complaints against them was not denied by the Respondents. The fact that at Bemetra the infrastructure may be incomplete and was under construction cannot lead to the conclusion for absence of administrative exigency or a punitive transfer or because by inadvertence another building of the Appellants themselves at Chhattisgarh may have been shown in the annexure. The fact that Bemetara was at a considerable distance from Churu was an irrelevant consideration.

(3.) Learned counsel for the Respondents urged that the transfer suffered from malice in law. The Respondents when assigned additional duties of a Coordinator at the Model Counselling Centre at Churu itself were given additional allowance of Rs. 5000/- but when they have been transferred to another State, only 10% additional allowance has been granted. The Appellants had attempted to mislead the Court by presenting photographs of another location. In support of the submission that the transfer was punitive in nature reliance was placed on (2009) 2 SCC 592 Somesh Tiwari v. Union of India and ors. It was lastly submitted that the seizure of the computers was not a ground mentioned in the order of transfer and the counter affidavit also asserts that it was not the reason for transfer. All these factors taken cumulatively are clearly reflective of the transfer inflicted by malice in law and being punitive in nature.