IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT MADRAS Dated : 16..7..2008 Coram: The Hon'ble Mr. Justice K.CHANDRU W.P. No. 10678 of 2004 M. Arunagiri .. Petitioner Vs. 1. The Chairman National Commission for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes New Delhi-110 003. 2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. BHEL House Siri Fort New Delhi-110 049. 3. The Additional General Manager (Corporate Personnel) Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. Tiruchy-14. .. Respondents Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking for issuance of writ of Certiorarified Mandamus calling for the records of the respondents in connection with the reply sent by the second respondent in D.O.A.A.Per.CLG. 18 dated 12.8.2002 and letter by the third respondent No. AA.R.CLG 18 dated 24.02.2003 addressed to the first respondent and quash the same and consequently direct the respondents 2 and 3 to promote the petitioner as Deputy General Manager notionally with effect from 2000 and accord all service benefits such as seniority, backwages, etc. For Petitioner : Mr. T. Sivananda for M/s Sivanandh & Associates For Respondents 2&3: Mr. B.T. Seshadri ORDER Heard the arguments of Mr. Sivanandam, learned counsel for the petitioner, on 03.7.2008 and the petitioner Mr. S. Arunagiri argued https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ in person on 04.7.2008 and Mr. B.T. Seshadri, learned counsel appearing for respondents 2 and 3 and perused the records. 2. The first respondent is the Chairman of the National Commission for Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes, New Delhi. When questioned as to why the said Commission was made as a party when no relief was claimed, the petitioner admitted that the Commission was impleaded so that it will kept posted with the developments in this case. 3. It is highly improper on the part of the petitioner to array a party against which no relief is claimed. Whenever any array of parties is made, it is only with a view to get any relief from such of those parties or to establish certain want of good faith or mala fide. Otherwise, there is no necessity to make them as parties and unnecessarily drag them to appear before the Court either in person or through counsel and make them to spend public money on such matters. 4. Even otherwise, as held by the Supreme Court in All India Indian Overseas Bank Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Employees Welfare Association and others v. Union of India and others [1996 (6) SC 606], SC / ST Commission has no power to deal with any service matter as it had not been granted any power to issue any interim order even though it is clothed with the powers of the Civil Court. In this context, it is relevant to extract the following passages found in paragraphs 10 and 11 of the said judgment:- Para 10: "Interestingly, here, in clause (8) of Article 338, the words used are “the Commission shall ... have all the powers of the Civil Court trying a suit”. But the words “all the powers of a Civil Court” have to be exercised “while investigating any matter referred to in sub-clause (a) or inquiring into any complaint referred to in sub-clause (b) of clause 5”. All the procedural powers of a civil court are given to the Commission for the purpose of investigating and inquiring into these matters and that too for that limited purpose only. The powers of a civil court of granting injunctions, temporary or permanent, do not inhere in the Commission nor can such a power be inferred or derived from a reading of clause (8) of Article 338 of the Constitution. Para 11: The Commission having not been specifically granted any power to issue interim injunctions, lacks the authority to issue an order of the type found in the letter dated 4-3-1993. The order itself being bad https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ for want of jurisdiction, all other questions and considerations raised in the appeal are redundant. The High Court was justified in taking the view it did. The appeal is dismissed. No costs." In the light of the above, the first respondent will stand deleted from the array of parties in this writ petition. 5. The prayer of the writ petitioner was to set aside the order dated 12.8.2002 issued by the second respondent as well as the order dated 24.02.2003, which is a letter sent by the third respondent through the first respondent. Insofar as the letter dated 24.02.2003 and 12.8.2002 are concerned, they were replies sent by the third respondent to the SC / ST Commission in respect of the queries raised by them and it is only a response to the query and no cause of action had arisen for challenging the same. As already stated, the SC/ST Commission has no power to deal with any service cases directly and any enquiry conducted by them is only to submit a report by the Commission to presented to the Central Government periodically. Therefore, the challenge to the letter dated 24.02.2003 sent by way of response to the National Commission and the order dated 12.8.2002 are misconceived and in the light of the above, the Commission does not have any locus standi to question the same. Accordingly, the prayer as found in the petition cannot be granted. 6. This only leaves with the last prayer, viz., the consequential direction to the respondents 2 and 3 to promote the petitioner as Deputy General Manager notionally w.e.f. 2000 and to accord all service benefits such as seniority, backwages, etc. The petitioner, who entered in the service of the second respondent in the year 1979 as a Junior Executive (Engineering), subsequently got several promotions. During the year 1993, he became Manager (E4 Level). 7. With reference to denial of further promotion, a counter affidavit dated 29.7.2005 has been filed. It is stated that during the year 2001, the petitioner was considered for the post of Deputy General Manager and he was not found fit. Again in 2002, the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) did not find him suitable for promotion and the same was the case for the years 2003 to 2005. The stand of the respondents was that during June 1997, the petitioner was interviewed by the DPC and the petitioner went through the promotion to the post of Senior Manager along with 169 candidates which included 21 officers belonging to SC / ST category. During that period, the Committee also consisted of a SC / ST representative as directed by the Central Government. In that selection, 14 SC / ST officers were promoted to E4 Grade from E5 Grade. The selection of 14 persons work out to 66% of the quota meant in that year. But on a comparative merit, the https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ petitioner's name was not included along with the successful candidates. 8. When the petitioner was not selected during the year selection in the year 1997, as a Senior Manager, he cannot now seek for promotion to the post of DGM, that too, w.e.f. 25.6.2000. It is also stated that there is no reservation for SC / ST candidates for promotion to the post of DGM from the post of Senior Manager. Therefore, when he was considered for the year 2001-2002, his name was not recommended by the DPC for promotion and the same thing got repeated in the subsequent years also. Therefore, it was stated that the petitioner has no cause for complaint. The interest of SC / ST employees was adequately taken into account by the respondent BHEL. 9. Though an averment is made in the affidavit that fake entries are made in the ACR and that the respondents are prejudiced against the petitioner and that they are always in the habit of creating records undermining the efficiency of the weaker section, the same was stoutly denied by the respondents in the counter statement and the result of the selection made during the year 1997 was also brought to the notice of this Court. 10. The contention of the petitioner is that whether it is a promotion or direct recruitment, it should have a post-based reservation and when 1252 vacancies are available in the post of DGM, 282 posts should be reserved for SC / ST and on the date of filing of the writ petition, only 189 persons were working in that post. Therefore, a direction should be given to promote the petitioner with retrospective effect. 11. The petitioner arguing in person, submitted that he is one of the most efficient officer and he has done several cost effective measures to the BHEL. All these self-claiming laurels cannot be considered in a writ petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. Though he has made vague allegations against the entire establishment, he is not able to pinpoint any particular allegation against any particular officer. Even in the written submission submitted by him, his only contention was that there has been a large scale manipulation in the matter of DPC awarding marks. These submissions and the working of DPC, convened in the year 2001, without any credible material, cannot be gone into in a writ petition. Unless there is mala fide attributed to the members of the DPC, this Court, exercising power under Article 226 of the Constitution, cannot decide the relative merits of the candidates, who have been screened and selected by the DPC. None of the selected members who according to the petitioner, are less meritorious have been made parties to the writ petition. 12. The Supreme Court vide its judgment in Satya Narain Shukla v. Union of India [2006) 9 SCC 69] dealt with similar allegations made by an individual and the following passages found https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ in paragraphs 26 to 28 may be usefully reproduced below :- Para 26: "Another contention urged by the appellant is that the appellant has an outstanding service record, and therefore, his non-empanelment is arbitrary. This Court has reiterated in Samar Singh that merely because an officer has an outstanding service record there is no automatic empanelment. After referring to para 14 of the Central Staffing Scheme, this Court observed (vide SCC p.561, para 12) as follows: “Apart from the record there are other matters that have to be considered, namely, merit, competence, leadership and flair for participating in the policy-making process and the need of the Central Government which is the paramount consideration. We are unable to hold that since the performance of the respondent after his promotion as Additional Secretary had been found to be excellent and outstanding, the non-inclusion of his name from the panel by the Special Committee must lead to the inference that there was no proper consideration of the merit and suitability of the respondent for empanelment by the Special Committee.” There is no merit in the contention that the non-empanelment of the appellant is arbitrary, as urged. Para 27: Finally, the appellant also urged that his non-empanelment was the result of mala fides. In support of this contention he has contended that his ACRs were not written fairly and in fact his excellent record had been spoiled by his superior officers on account of mala fides against him. When we repeatedly queried him as to what were the mala fides alleged before the Tribunal and the High Court, he contended that his ACRs had been left incomplete and his empanelment as Additional Secretary/Secretary to the Government of India was considered on the basis of incomplete ACRs. The appellant had made an application to the Tribunal that his empanelment should be considered only after the authorities are directed to complete his CR dossiers. As a matter of fact, the prayer made by the appellant was granted by the Tribunal and the authorities concerned were directed to complete the CR dossiers of the appellant and only thereafter to take a decision on empanelment. Thus, it is clear that the decision for empanelment for the post of Secretary was not based on incomplete ACRs. Para 28: The appellant then contended that some officers were biased against him and their assessment was vitiated by mala fides. When we asked him as to who the said officers were, he named a former Cabinet Secretary, https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ T.S.R. Subramanian, and certain other officers who had written his CR dossiers. The reasons for mala fides alleged by him are that he had seriously disagreed with some of the policy decisions taken by some of these officers, and therefore, they bore an animus against him. He also contended that the very officers who had written his downgraded entries, later on were involved in some scandals. In our view, neither of these grounds hold any water. From the records we do not see any strong motive for any of the officers to bear animus against the appellant to ensure that he was not empanelled. Dissent is the essence of democracy and merely because one disagrees with another, one cannot jump to the conclusion that the other harbours a grudge against the former." 13. In the light of the above, the writ petition is misconceived and devoid of merits. Accordingly, the writ petition is dismissed. However, there will be no order as to costs. Sd/ Asst.Registrar /true copy/ Sub Asst.Registrar gri To 1.The Chairman National Commission for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes New Delhi 110 003.-110 003. 2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. BHEL House Siri Fort New Delhi-110 049. https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ 3. The Additional General Manager (Corporate Personnel) Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. Tiruchy-14. +1cc to M/s.Sivanandh and Associates Sr 37540 +1cc to M/s.B.T.Seshadri, Advocate Sr 37931 SMK (CO) km/13.10. W.P. No. 10678 of 2004 https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/