Accordingly the following instructions are hereby issued on the subject for the guidance of all the Ministries /Departments in the Government . " Paragraph VII of the said Office Memorandum, which deals with "the validity of the proceedings of Departmental Promotion Committees when one member is absent", reads thus: "The proceedings of the Departmental Promotion Committee shall be legally valid and can be operated upon notwithstanding the absence of any of its members other than the Chairman provided that the member was duly invited but he absented himself for one reason or the other and there was no deliberate attempt to exclude him from the deliberation of the DPC and provided further that the majority of the members constituting the Departmental Promotion Committee are present in the meeting." According to Paragraph VII of the Office Memorandum, extracted above, it is clear that the absence of any of the members of a Departmental Promotion Committee, other than the Chairman, would E not vitiate the proceedings of the Departmental Promotion Committee provided that the member absent has been duly invited but he absented himself for some reason and that there was no deliberate attempt to exclude him from the deliberation of the Departmental Promotion Committee and that the majority of the members constituting the Departmental Promotion Committee are present in the meeting.