Regular Second Appeal No. 1477 of 2007 [1] IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Regular Second Appeal No. 1477 of 2007(O&M) Date of decision: 3.11.2008 Charan Singh ..Appellant v. State of Punjab and another .. Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RAJESH BINDAL Present: Mr. R.K. Arora, Advocate for the appellant. .. Rajesh Bindal J. The plaintiff is in appeal before this Court against concurrent finding of fact recorded by both the courts below, whereby the suit filed by him for declaration to the effect that he was entitled to fixation of pay under Assured Career Progression Grade as per letter dated 25.9.1998 w.e.f. 1.1.1996, was dismissed. The suit was filed on 26.11.2002. Learned counsel for the appellant-plaintiff submitted that adverse Annual Confidential Reports, which were sought to be relied upon to deny the benefit to the appellant-plaintiff, had not been conveyed to him and on that account the same could not be considered for the purpose and the rejection of claim made by him for grant of pay scale under Assured Career Progression scheme is totally arbitrary. Having heard learned counsel for the appellant-plaintiff, I do not find any merit in the submissions made. The case is not as simple as is sought to be projected. A perusal of the judgment of the learned court below shows that during the service career of the appellant-plaintiff, he was awarded 20 punishments of stoppage of increments from time to time. These punishments were imposed on the basis of disciplinary proceedings which stand in the way for grant of promotion to an employee. The grant of Assured Career Progression grade is admissible to those employees who are unable to get promotion during their long career of service, because of there being less posts in the promotional cadre, but the criteria therefor is same as is for grant of promotion. Once it had come on record that the appellant-plaintiff had been inflicted with 20 punishments of stoppage of increments after disciplinary enquiries, it cannot be held that he had a clean record and should be granted Assured Career Progression grade. Regular Second Appeal No. 1477 of 2007 [2] Accordingly, in my view, no illegality has been committed by the learned court below while rejecting the claim made by the appellant-plaintiff. The findings recorded are plain and simple findings of fact giving rise to no question of law, much less a substantial question of law. As I do not find any merit in the present appeal, I do not find any reason even to condone the delay of 40 days in filing the present appeal. Accordingly, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeal as well as the application for condonation of delay are dismissed. (Rajesh Bindal) Judge 3.11.2008 mk