Court No. - 34
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 18939 of 2019 Petitioner :- Union Of India And 3 Others Respondent :- Ajay Kumar Agrawal And Another Counsel for Petitioner :- Purnendu Kumar Singh,Shashi Prakash Sing Sr. Advocate Counsel for Respondent :- Ashish Srivastava
Hon'ble Sudhir Agarwal,J. Hon'ble Rajeev Misra,J.
1. Heard Sri Shashi Prakash Singh, Additional Solicitor General of India, assisted by Purnendu Kumar Singh learned counsel for petitioners and Sri Ashish Srivastava, learned counsel for respondent-1.
2. Respondent-1 filed Original Application (hereinafter referred to as "O.A.") No.330/00109 of 2019 before Central Administrative Tribunal (hereinafter referred to as "Tribunal") seeking following relief:
"i. This Hon'ble Court may be pleased to direct the respondent No.3 to promote and post the applicant in the MTS cadre consequent upon passing the examination from GDS cadre to MTS cadre for the year 2016-17 in the Jhansi Division, pursuant to result dated 14.11.2016.
ii. This Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to direct the respondents to give all consequential benefits.
iii. Any other relief, which this Hon'ble Court may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of present case.
iv. Award cost of the original application in favour of the applicant."
3. Tribunal, instead of deciding the issue on merits, left it open to petitioners to consider claim of applicant/ respondent-1 regarding his posting as MTS cadre and pass appropriate order in accordance with rules. Para 4 of order dated 07.02.2019 passed by Tribunal reads as under :
"Considering the limited prayer of the applicant, we direct the competent authority amongst the respondents to consider the applicant for posting against MTS post in case he fulfills all the eligibility conditions and posts are available, as per rules. This exercise may be done within a period of one month from the date of receipt of certified copy of this order."
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4. Further, Tribunal has also made it clear that it has not expressed any opinion on the merits of the case. Therefore very innocuous order was passed by Tribunal directing petitioners to consider claim of applicant-respondent 1 whether he was liable to be posted as MTS in accordance with rules, and pass appropriate order.
5. Everything was left in the domain of petitioners. We do not find as to why petitioners were advised to file review, which they actually did and filed Review Application No.330/00031/2019 along with delay condonation application No.330/01691/2019. Learned Tribunal did not find reason for condonation of delay to be satisfactory and rejected the same and consequently review application was also rejected vide judgment dated 09.8.2019. Both these judgments dated 07.02.2019 and 09.08.2019 whereby O.A. was finally disposed of and the order whereby delay condonation as well as review application were rejected, have been challenged in this petition.
6. Learned A.S.G.I., when questioned, could not dispute that no order on merits has been passed by Tribunal and no rights of parties have been adjudicated. In fact Tribunal has left everything within the authority of petitioners and the only thing it had done is that it had directed competent authority to consider claim of applicant-respondent 1 that whether he was liable to be posted as MTS or not and pass appropriate order. Respondents- petitioners are free to pass orders either way and there is no adjudication on merits.
7. In these circumstances, we do not find any cause of grievance exists to petitioners to file writ petition against aforesaid orders, which is absolutely innocuous and has not decided any issue on merits. We therefore, find no manifest error in the orders passed by Tribunal so as to justify any interference in the writ petition.
8. Dismissed.
Order Date :- 28.11.2019 KA