SUMER CHAND BHANDARI Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS litigation commenced in this Court more than twenty years back with the filing of a writ petition on March 3, 1967 by appellant Sumer Chand Bhandari, an officer of the Rajasthan Administrative Service, who was then in the junior scale, alleging unequal treatment in the matter of employment and promotion According to the Rules of this Court in existence till recently the writ petition was heard by a Single Judge who dismissed the same by an order dated September 30, 1975. In accordance with the provision contained in section 18 of the Rajasthan High Court Ordinance providing for an internal appeal, this appeal was then filed in 1975 and is now being disposed of by us. During this period the appellant's grievance has got aggravated at every stage of his service career resulting from his initial grievance that his juniors had been promoted to the senior scale in the Rajasthan Administrative Service before him; and this continued till his retirement from the Indian Administrative Service on December 31, 1983 on attaining the age of superannuation. The claim of the appellant now is reduced only to the monetary benefits if he succeeds to any extent in this litigation. This is not an isolated incident of its kind to reveal the resultant hardship to the litigants as a result of a writ petition being required by the earlier Rules to be heard in the first instance by a Single Bench and then on appeal by a Division Bench for the passage of the lis through one Court only.

(2.) THE appellant argued his case in person before us. Embittered by the passage of time and the travails of the litigation taking so long and two stages to pass through one Court only, the appellant took some time at the hearing to confine himself, only to the relevant facts and points at this stage. However he showed remarkable adjustment to ultimately confine his case only to the real grievances which alone are material. We shall now state the only material facts relevant for deciding the limited controversy which survived at the end of the hearing before us.

(3.) WE may also mention that selection to the senior scale was based on the principle of 'seniority -cum -merit' and also on the basis of 'merit' alone in the proportion of 2 : 1 according to the Rules, the validity of which has been upheld by the Supreme Court and is no longer in dispute. We shall omit reference to the facts relating to officers other than O.P. Joshi respondent No. 48, K.L. Kochar respondent No.49, D.N. Upadhyay respondent No.50 and K.M. Sahi respondent No. 61. Since the appellant confined his claim ultimately at the hearing to seniority over these four officers only at every stage commencing with the senior scale in the Rajasthan Administrative Service and the consequential benefits on that basis. In the writ petition filed on March 3, 1967 soon after the impugned selections made by the Departmental Promotion Committee held on September 21, 1965 and the appointments made on that basis challenge was made to the selections contained in all these three lists. It is, therefore, obvious that the writ petition was filed promptly without any avoidable delay.