Balwan Singh and Others vs H.P. State Forest Corp. and Others

Deepak Gupta, J.—The petitioners, by means of this writ petition, have prayed that the seniority list whereby respondents No. 3 to 34 have been shown senior to the petitioners be set-aside and the promotion process which has started on the basis of this seniority list be set-aside.

The main grievance of the petitioners is that they should be assigned the seniority on the basis of the date when they were appointed on daily-wage basis and the services rendered by them on daily-wage basis should be taken into consideration while reckoning their seniority vis.-a-vis. the private respondents.

On the other hand, the stand of the respondents is that the seniority list in question has been finalized in compliance to the decision of the erstwhile Administrative Tribunal in O.A. No. 1544 of 1998 titled Udham Singh v. H.P. State Forest Corporation decided on 24.12.1999. The stand of the Forest Corporation is that the seniority has to be reckoned by taking into consideration the date of regular employment of the employees.

Respondents 3 to 34 were admittedly appointed on regular basis prior to the applicants. In fact some daily-waged employees were given deemed date of regularization after completing one year''s service on daily-wages. There can be no quarrel with the proposition that the seniority has to be reckoned from the date of regular appointment and no employee can claim that his services on daily-wage basis should be counted while working as such vis-a-vis those who may have been appointed on regular basis even though those who were appointed on regular basis may have been appointed after the daily-waged employee. In fact in this case, I find that the petitioners were appointed on 17.5.1984, 18.5.1984, 21.5.1984 and 27.5.1984 and they were shown to have been regularized after one year of service in the year 1985.

The stand of the respondents is that out of the private respondents some were appointed directly on regular basis and therefore there was no need to give them deemed date of appointment and the others were appointed on daily-wages earlier to the petitioners and therefore their deemed date of appointment was earlier to that of the petitioners.

I have gone through the record and find that the stand taken by the respondents is correct. Obviously those who were regularly appointed had to be treated senior to the petitioners and in cases where the private respondents were appointed on daily-wage basis the record shows that they were appointed earlier to the petitioners and therefore their deemed date of regularization is earlier to the petitioners.

In view of the above discussion, there is no merit in the petition which is rejected. No costs.