State Of U.P.& Ors vs Arvind Kumar Srivastava & Ors

The respondents 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 the respondents. The respondents herein did not take any further steps in the said suit either by filing application for restoration of the suit or challenging the said order in appeal. In fact, there was a complete quietus on the part of these respondents.

It 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 Tribunal's order dated August 16, 1991 attained finality and the persons who had approached the Tribunal got the appointments.

The respondents 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, the respondents filed the writ petition for giving appointments to them as well on the strength of the judgment of the Tribunal given in the case of other persons, claiming parity. This writ petition was rejected vide order dated June 06, 1995 by the Chief Medical Officer. Against this rejection the respondents 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 these respondents were also be entitled to the same relief. The High Court has affirmed the order of the Tribunal.

Let us first take note of those judgments, which are referred to by the learned counsel for the respondents, wherein this Court has applied the ratio of the earlier judgments to the similarly situated persons giving them the same benefit. First case, in the line of these cases, referred to by the learned counsel for the respondents is the judgment in Inder Pal Yadav & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.[1] That was a case where the services of casual labour employed on railway projects continuously for more than a year were terminated on the ground that the projects where these casual labour were working had been wound up. Challenging their termination, writ petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution of India were filed in this Court. During the pendency of these petitions, Railway Administration framed scheme for their absorption as temporary workmen on completion of 360 days of continuous employment. This scheme was made applicable to those who were in service as on January 01, 1984. In view of this development, writ petitions were set out for hearing to examine the fairness and justness of the Scheme, particularly, on the issue as to whether choice of date of January 01, 1984 was arbitrary or discriminatory. The Court was not enthused by fixation of January 01, 1984 as the cut off date on the ground that it was likely to introduce an invidious distinction between similarly situated persons and expose some workmen to arbitrary discrimination flowing from fortuitous Court's order. It was noticed that in some matters, the Court had granted interim stay before the workmen could be retrenched while in some other cases no such interim orders had been passed. Thus, as a result of grant of interim relief by stay/ suspension of the order of retrenchment, persons benefitted by the said interim order and were treated in service as on January 01, 1984. Those who failed to obtain the interim relief, their services were terminated in the meantime and, therefore, they were not in service as on January 01, 1984. The Court pointed out that though both the groups belong to the same category, one category could get the benefit of the scheme with cut off date of January 01, 1984, whereas the other category would fail to get the benefit/advance of the scheme. The Court also noted that there may be some other persons, similarly situated, who could not afford to rush to the Court and they would also be left out. Giving these reasons, the date of January 01, 1984 fixed in the scheme was struck down and the Court while accepting the scheme framed by the Railway Administration, modified the date from January 01, 1984 to January 01, 1981. While doing so, following reasons were given:

For all the foregoing reasons, we allow the appeal and set aside the order of the High Court as well as that of the Tribunal. There shall, however, be no order as to costs.

October 17, 2014.