REKHA PANDEY Vs. COAL INDIA LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has approached this Court with a prayer for a direction upon the respondents to grant E6 Grade promotion to the petitioner at least with effect from the date her juniors have been promoted, including Mr. Biswabash Behuria promoted w.e.f. 20.09.2013 and effective date of her promotion to all the earlier grades be amended in the like manner so as to make it at par with her juniors and due corrections be made in the service records correcting her due dates of entry into the successive grades as per her seniority position in All India Merit List (Annexure-2) and Global Seniority List of E-1 (Annexure-4) with all consequential benefits.

(2.) The factual exposition as has been delineated in the writ petition is that the petitioner was appointed as Welfare Officer (Trainee) in Coal India Limited (in short 'CIL') vide appointment letter dated 11.06.1994. It was stipulated in the appointment letter that she will be on training for a period of 2 years. During the said training period, she was to be paid pay scale of E1 Grade with other allowances admissible to the Executives of CIL (Clause 3.2) and also eligible for leave etc. as mentioned in Schedule-II (Clause 3.4). Schedule II to the appointment letter provided for various categories of leave, including extraordinary leave to be granted after the casual or medical leave would get exhausted and Clause 4 of the same, stipulated about appointment to regular post carrying higher pay scale for a period of 1 year on probation, after completion of training. In the same year i.e. 1994 All India Merit List for Welfare Officers (Trainee) was published in which the name of the petitioner figured at Sr. No. 11 and inter se seniority of the persons in the merit list should be governed by their position in the panel. Subsequently, the petitioner joined on 23.06.1994 and was given posting in Central Coalfields Ltd. (in short 'CCL') vide office order dated 09.07.1994. It is further the case of the petitioner that on 03.09.1996, a Global Seniority List as on 24.04.1996 in E-1 Grade was issued by CIL in which the name of the petitioner figured at Sr. No.78 and the seniority position was duly set out in accordance with the position in the original All India Merit List. Thereafter, the petitioner was placed/promoted to E 2 and E3 Grades, which were in the nature of Cluster Promotion and not vacancy based and as such, not affected by the inter se seniority position. On 15.02.2010, the promotion to E4 Grade was granted to the petitioner by CIL and also notified by CCL on 19.02.2010, which was the first vacancy based promotion. Later on the Grades were redesignated and the old E4 Grade redesignated as E5 and E5 as E6. It is the further case of the petitioner that in the provisional seniority list for E 5 (new/revised) issued on 02.05.2016, the petitioner was at Sr. No. 41, whereas the name of one Mr. Biswabash Behuria was shown at Sr. No.2, But the said Biswabash Behuria is much junior to the petitioner in the Global Seniority list of E1 Grade, dated 03.09.1996 in which Mr. Behuria figured at Sr. No. 120 and the petitioner was at Sr. No. 78. Aggrieved by the same, the petitioner represented before the respondents on 06.10.2016 and on 12.12.2016, but no heed was paid.

(3.) It is further the case of the petitioner that in the meantime, Mr. Behuria, who was posted at Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd., another subsidiary of CIL was being subjected to adverse effect on seniority owing to few days of being on leave without pay during his training period and aggrieved by the same, he approached the Hon'ble Orissa High Court and where some relief was granted to him. The petitioner also understood that her seniority was being made to be affected adversely on account of the fact that she had likewise been on leave without pay for a few days during her training period, which was due to maternity reasons and on strict advise of Gynecologist for bed confinement. She had been on extraordinary leave without pay but it was sanctioned and authorized leave.