Case: State Of U.P Vs. Arvind Kumar Srivastava

To mention at the outset, the Tribunal as well as the High Court has given thes herein benefit of the order passed by the Court in earlier round of litigation filed by similarly situated persons. Thes contend that as far as theses are concerned, they never approached the Court seeking such a relief and were only fence-sitters and, therefore, relief should not have been granted to them even if they were similarly situated as those persons who have been granted relief in the petitions filed by them. Respondents, on the other hand, contend that once it is found that both sets of persons are identically placed, the impugned orders granting them the same benefit are in tune with the constitutional mandate enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution of India.Such a situation has not occurred for the first time in the present appealThere are many decisions of this Court. If outcome alone of those judgments is seen, one would find that in some cases the Courts have extended the benefit to the similarly situated persons, whereas, in some other cases similar benefit is denied to the second set of people who approached the Court subsequently. However, on delving deep into the rationale and reasoning of these two sets of cases, one is able to mentallye the logic behind different outcomes. Under what circumstances such a benefit can be extended and what are the reasons for denying the same, shall be discerned after taking note of those judgments. But, before undertaking that exercise, it would be apt to take note of the facts of this case in order to understand and appreciate as to how theIt was sometime in the year 1986 that the Chief Medical Officer, Varanasi, had advertised certain posts of Homeopathic Compounder and Ward Boys in various newspapers. Respondents herein applied for the said post and participated in the selection process. After the interviews, they were kept in the waiting list. Those who were in the select list were offered the appointments. Some of those candidates who were higher in merit and were offered the appointments did not join. For this reason, candidates in the waiting list were issued appointment letters by the then Chief Medical Officer. These included thes herein as well. However, before thes could join their duties, new Chief Medical Officer assumed the charge and blocked their joining. Thereafter, vide order dated June 22, 1987 he even cancelled the said appointments made by his predecessor for these Class-III and Class-IV posts i.e. Homeopathic Compounder and Ward Boys.s filed the suit in the Court of City Munsif, Varanasi challenging the aforesaid orders dated June 22, 1987 cancelling their appointments by the new Chief Medical Officer. This suit was registered as Suit No. 695/1987. It appears that this suit could not be taken to its logical conclusion as same was dismissed for non-prosecution because of non appearance of the advocate of theIt so happened that a few other candidates who were also affected by the same orders dated June 22, 1987, whereby their appointments were cancelled, approached the Tribunal challenging the legality, validity and proprietary of the said order on several grounds. One of the grounds taken was that before cancellation of their appointments, no show-cause notice was given to them. The Tribunal decided the case filed by them in their favour vide judgment dated August 16, 1991 holding the impugned order dated June 22, 1987 as illegal and void and quashed the same. Against the order of the Tribunal, the State filed the writ petition in the High Court. This writ petition was dismissed on August 27, 1992 thereby confirming the order passed by the Tribunal. The Special Leave Petition filed by the State met the same fate as that was also dismissed by this Court on August 12, 1994. In this manner, the Tribunals order dated August 16, 1991 attained finality and the persons who had approached the Tribunal got the appointments.s herein waited all this while, that is till the dismissal of the Special Leave Petition in the year 1994. It is only thereafter, in the year 1995, thegiving appointments to them as well on the strength of the judgment of the Tribunal given in the case of other persons, claiming parity. Thisvide order dated June 06, 1995 by the Chief Medical Officer. Against this rejection thes approached the Tribunal by filing Claim Petition No. 96/1996. As mentioned above, the said petition was allowed by the Tribunal on the ground that they were in the same position in which the other successful candidates were given relief and as such theses were also be entitled to the same relief. The High Court has affirmed the order of the Tribunal.

Reasoning: The legal principles which emerge from the reading of the aforesaid judgments, cited both by thes as well as the, can be summed up as under:(1) Normal rule is that when a particular set of employees is given relief by the Court, all other identically situated persons need to be treated alike by extending that benefit. Not doing so would amount to discrimination and would be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India. This principle needs to be applied in service matters more emphatically as the service jurisprudence evolved by this Court from time to time postulates that all similarly situated persons should be treated similarly. Therefore, the normal rule would be that merely because other similarly situated persons did not approach the Court earlier, they are not to be treated differently(2) However, this principle is subject to well recognized exceptions in the form of laches and delays as well as acquiescence. Those persons who did not challenge the wrongful action in their cases and acquiesced into the same and woke up after long delay only because of the reason that their counterparts who had approached the Court earlier in time succeeded in their efforts, then such employees cannot claim that the benefit of the judgment rendered in the case of similarly situated persons be extended to them. They would be treated as fence-sitters and laches and delays, and/or the acquiescence, would be a valid ground to dismiss their claim(3) However, this exception may not apply in those cases where the judgment pronounced by the Court was judgment in rem with intention to give benefit to all similarly situated persons, whether they approached the Court or not. With such a pronouncement the obligation is cast upon the authorities to itself extend the benefit thereof to all similarly situated person. Such a situation can occur when the subject matter of the decision touches upon the policy matters, like scheme of regularisation and the like (see K.C. SharmaOrs. v. Union of India (supra). On the other hand, if the judgment of the Court was in personam holding that benefit of the said judgment shall accrue to the parties before the Court and such an intention is stated expressly in the judgment or it can be impliedly found out from the tenor and language of the judgment, those who want to get the benefit of the said judgment extended to them shall have to satisfy that their petition does not suffer from either laches and delays or acquiescenceViewed from this angle, in the present case, we find that the selection process took place in the year 1986. Appointment orders were issued in the year 1987, but were also cancelled vide orders dated June 22, 1987. Thes before us did notn orders till the year 1996, i.e. for a period of 9 years. It means that they had accepted the cancellation of their appointments. They woke up in the year 1996 only after finding that some other persons whose appointment orders were also cancelled got the relief. By that time, nine years had passed. The earlier judgment had granted the relief to the parties before the Court. It would also be pertinent to highlight that theses have not joined the service nor working like the employees who succeeded in earlier case before the Tribunal. As of today, 27 years have passed after the issuance of cancellation orders. Therefore, not only there was unexplained delay and laches in filing the claim petition after period of 9 years, it would be totally unjust to direct the appointment to give them the appointment as of today, i.e. after a period of 27 years when most of theses would be almost 50 years of age or above