C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -1- ***** IN THE PUNJAB AND HARYANA HIGH COURT AT CHANDIGARH C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 Date of Decision : 07.07.2010 Vijay Mohindru .......... Petitioner Versus The State of Haryana & others ...... Respondents CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE VINOD K. SHARMA Present : Mr. K.L. Kohli, Advocate for the petitioner in CWP No. 7574 of 1996. Mr. Harish Rathee, Advocate for the petitoiner in CWP No. 6169 of 1996. Mr. Vivek Sharma, Advocate for the petitoiner in CWP No. 6630 of 1996. Ms. Sushma Chopra, Addl. A.G., Haryana. Mr. Parveen Gupta, Advocate for respondent No.3 (Confed). **** VINOD K. SHARMA, J. (ORAL) This judgment shall dispose of six Civil Writ petitions i.e. CWP No. 6630 of 1996 titled Neelam Kumar Vs. The State of Haryana & others, CWP No. 6169 of 1996 titled Smt. Sudesh Kumari Vs. Haryana State Co-op Consumer, Wholesale Store Federation Ltd. & others, CWP No. 7116 of 1996 titled Subhash Dhawan Vs. The Haryana State Federation of Consumers Cooperative Wholesale Stores Ltd. (Confed) & others, CWP No. 7574 of 1996 titled Vijay C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -2- ***** Mohindru Vs. The State of Haryana & others, CWP No. 10073 of 1996 titled O.P. Chutani Vs. The Haryana State Federation of Consumers Cooperative Wholesale Stores Limited & others and CWP No. 10707 of 1996 titled Gurupdesh Singh Vs. The State of Haryana & others, as common questions of law and facts are involved, and have been filed against same impugned order, vide which the objections filed by the petitioners to the tentative seniority list have been rejected. For the sake of brevity facts are being taken from CWP No. 7574 of 1996 titled Vijay Mohindru Vs. The State of Haryana & others. The brief facts leading to filing of this writ petition are that the petitioner was appointed as Clerk-cum-Typist on purely temporary and adhoc basis with the stipulation, that she shall be governed by the terms and conditions of the Service Rules of the Confed. The case of the petitioner is, that according to the Service Rules the seniority is to be counted from the date of joining service. During the course of service of the petitioner on adhoc basis advertisement was issued by respondents on 26.6.1979 inviting applications for the posts of Clerk. The petitioner applied for being appointed as Clerk and she was selected. The case of the petitioner is, that while giving her appointment letter a specific clause was added mentioning therein that all benefits of service rendered by her on adhoc basis will be C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -3- ***** given to her by taking the date of joining of the petitioner as Clerk on 30.1.1979. The petitioner was promoted to the post of Assistant. However, subsequently, a tentative seniority list was circulated in which respondents No. 4 to 9 were shown as senior to her. The petitioner challenged the fixation of seniority list denying all benefits of service allowed to her, and also on the ground that respondents No. 4 to 9 were given benefit of service of the cadre to which they were not entitled. The petitioner filed CWP No. 2608 of 1994, which was disposed of by this Court on 23.5.1995 by passing the following operative order :- “Accordingly, these writ petitions are allowed. The impugned orders are set aside and the respondents are directed to re-decide the matter after hearing the petitioners as well as the respondents. It will be open to the Federation to even grant hearing to others who may be adversely affected by the final decision. The respondents may do the needful as expeditiously as possible preferably within six months. In the circumstances of these case, there will be no order as to costs.” It is pertinent to mention here, that along with the writ petition filed by the petitioner, other similar writ petitions were also disposed off, and the orders vide which some of the employees who were reverted after being promoted as Assistant by ignoring the service rendered by them, was set aside. In pursuance to the order passed by this Court, the C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -4- ***** respondents have passed impugned orders Annexures P-12 & P-13. The reading of the orders would show that the objections raised against the tentative seniority list have not been dealt with in detail, and an attempt has been made to justify the seniority list as framed by giving contradictory reasons with regard to different employees. For example, it would be pertinent to reproduce here the decision taken regarding the objections filed by the petitioners in CWP No. 7575 of 1996, the order reads as under :- “35. Smt. Vijay Mohindru. She was appointed as Clerk by Confed on 30.1.79 on adhoc basis, then on 25.1.80 on regular basis and promoted as Assistant on 22.5.84 on the basis of Clerk w.e.f. 25.1.80 for the purpose of fixation of her seniority.” The reading of the order would show, that this order cannot be sustained firstly for the reason, that the benefit of seniority was given to the petitioner by the employer at the time of her appointment, which was not the subject matter of any challenge, rather respondent No.1 while promoting the petitioner as Assistant had taken into consideration the date of her appointment to be 30.1.1979 and not 21.1.1980. It is only in order to reject the objections –that an attempt has been made to deny this benefit by treating it to be contrary to Rules. It is the case of the petitioner, that the Rules to which reference is made were only implemented in the year 1982, therefore, prima facie the Rules could not be the basis to reject the objections filed by the petitioner against seniority. Not only this, C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -5- ***** objections filed by the petitioner have been attached as Annexure P- 11 to justify her claim to the seniority. The petitioner had also raised objections against grant of seniority to respondents No. 4 to 9 on the plea, that the services rendered by them in the Store was not to be counted in the common cadre. However, no decision on the sobjections has been taken. Even in the other cases the objections raised by the petitioners in other writ petitions have also been dealt with in a cryptic manner without rejecting or taking decision on the objections. The learned counsel for the respondents, however, tried to support the order by contending therein, that the objections raised by the petitioners have been considered in terms of the order passed by this Court, and the impugned order was passed and thereafter seniority list was finalized. For the reasons stated above, this Court finds, that the impugned orders though deals with the respective petitioners, cannot be said to be a speaking order as it does not deal with specific pleas taken by the petitioners in objections to the tentative seniority list, nor any reasons have been given to reject the objections raised with regard to grant of seniority to the respondents in writ petitions. Consequently, these writ petitions are allowed, the impugned orders are set aside. The case is remanded back to the concerned authority to take a fresh decision after dealing with all the objections raised by the petitioners and thereafter finalize the C.W.P. No. 7574 of 1996 -6- ***** seniority list. The needful be done within four months from the date of receipt of certified copy of this order. It is made clear, that if any employee is interested in personal hearing, he may be afforded personal hearing also. 07.07.2010 (VINOD K. SHARMA) 'sp' JUDGE