Members have contacted me from various parts of the country, particularly where Units of our Association are not functional or where the Units have taken a neutral stand, regarding the proceedings before the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the matter of N R Parmar judgment implementation.
In brief, the matter came up before in Court 8 on 11.04.2018. On 10.4.18 we have received a copy of an application made on behalf of Sh. Ravi Malik requesting the Hon’ble Court to throw out our Counter affidavit filed on behalf of the AIACEGEO and take his plea in that place. The Court issued an order saying that since the counter against Sl. No of respondents had already been filed and NOC was not obtained, the application was being circulated.
During the hearing, the ASG stated that there was an apprehension that if the Parmar judgment is implemented with effect from 1.3.86 only, the officers who joined prior to 1986 could become juniors to those who joined in 1986. The Hon’ble Court asked the Ld. ASG to file a written affidavit in this regard and posted the matter for 17.4.18.
The Sr. Counsel of Sh. Ravi Malik mentioned about his application. Our counsel expressed opposition to the same. The Hon’ble Judge said that they were not going into these things and repeated that the case is posted for 17.4.18.
The order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in this regard is posted above.
Subsequently, we have received a Rejoinder for our counter given on behalf of the Department.
It is learnt that Sh. Ravi Malik and/or his supporters are circulating selected page/s from the said rejoinder and stating that the mention about the Association having impleaded is pertaining to their impleading in the Hon’ble Supreme Court. It is clarified that it is pertaining to the impleadment by the Association in the Hon’ble CAT. The mention about request for adhoc DPC by the Association also is only in relation to our Counter. The relevant portion of our counter is reproduced below:
20. In this background, some of the members of the Respondent Association approached the Hon’ble Tribunal at Chennai seeking implementation of the decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in N. R. Parmar, (2012) 13 SCC 340 before going ahead with the DPC and ordering of promotions. Since any delay in conducting of DPC and ordering of promotions would create difficulties for the Officers already stagnating with only one promotion in their entire career and since the posts would go unfilled, this Association also impleaded in the case with the plea that the department may be permitted to order ad hoc promotions.
21. When the Hon’ble Tribunal ordered a Stay in the matter, this Association also approached the Hon’ble High Court of Madras seeking a vacation of the Stay. The Hon’ble High Court also passed orders vacating the Stay, however subject to the final Order of the Hon’ble Tribunal.
22. The Hon’ble Tribunal, vide their Order dated 10.01.2017 allowed the application filed by the applicants holding that “ having applied the 1986 OM for fixing their seniority at the relevant time, the respondents cannot now argue that the 1986 OM as interpreted by the Hon’ble Apex Court could have no applicability to the applicants’ case. Further the respondents cannot be oblivious of the fact that such selective application of the ratio laid down by the Hon’ble Apex Court might make a 1985 Direct Recruit junior to a 1986 Direct Recruit which cannot be sustained by any logic or reason. We are therefore of the view that the relief sought by the applicants has to be granted and accordingly the seniority list published by the respondent without applying the N.R. Parmar case and also the order in O.A.741 and 629 of 2013 which was confirmed by the Mumbai bench of Tribunal by giving seniority to the applicants from the date of initiation of recruitment process. Also the respondents are directed to consider the names of the applicants strictly in accordance with such revised seniority in the ensuing DPC”.
23. Since the promotions from the year 1997 have been only on ad-hoc basis and are yet to be regularized in terms of this Hon’ble Court’s Order dated 03.08.2011 cited supra, and since the stagnating officers were likely to retire without even their second promotion even as vacancies were lying in the promotional posts, this Association has been repeatedly requesting the CBEC to approach the Hon’ble Court to obtain permission to conduct DPC and order promotions on an ad-hoc basis, under the condition that the seniority of the Officers would be re-fixed within a specific time frame, in terms of the judgment of the Hon’ble Apex Court in the case of N.R. Parmar. It was also repeatedly requested that the CBEC should issue clear cut instructions to the Zonal authorities in charge of fixing of seniority, to re-fix the seniority in terms of the judgment in the case of N R Parmar, as has been done in the Central Board of Direct Taxes, within the same Finance Ministry, where the decision has been implemented.
I am also informed that Sh. Ravi Malik is seeking financial support for his petition. In this regard, we have already stated that taking funds directly from the members would not have transparency and accountability and any such attempt should be made only through the Units.
In this regard, it is also pertinent to mention that in the e mails attached to the application filed on behalf of Sh. Ravi Malik I did not see the e mail from even a single unit office bearer. (I mean functional units). This is in comparison to the 21 units who have given their declaration of support to our AIB and 4498 DDOs submitted already to the Board by us on 17.1.18.
Hence, in the above circumstances, members of those areas where the units are neutral or do not have a functional unit, members may ensure that their money is only well spent.
R. Manimohan
Secretary General,
AIACEGEO
