Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)
Pinaki Adhikary vs Union Of India And Others on 10 March, 2015
Author: Sanjib Banerjee
Bench: Sanjib Banerjee
1
Serial No.43.
March 10, 2015.
SG
WP 30700 (W) of 2014
Pinaki Adhikary
-versus-
Union of India and others
Mr Chandra Sekhar Bag
... for the petitioner.
Mr Saptarshi Roy
... for the Union of India.
The grievance of the petitioner is that despite the petitioner
applying for an inter-zonal transfer from the North-East Frontier
Railway to the Metro Railway pursuant to a Railway Board circular
of March 12, 2012, the petitioner's request has been declined on
arbitrary grounds, though two others similarly placed as the
petitioner have been transferred to Eastern Railway and to North-
Eastern Railway.
When the matter was last taken up on February 23, 2015
such grievance of the petitioner was noticed and the respondents
were required to justify how dissimilar treatment could be meted out to similarly placed employees. The records pertaining to the transfers of Kartick Chandra Ghosh and Afzal Khan were required to be produced in court.
Before looking into the reasons for the respondents transferring Ghosh and Khan, it is necessary to appreciate that by the order impugned dated July 28, 2014, the North-East Frontier 2 Railway declined the petitioner's request for transfer since such division of the Railways was "facing acute shortage of manpower in all ranks from constable to inspector ..."
Ordinarily, in the exercise of the power of judicial review, the court scarcely sits in judgment over orders of transfer once administrative exigencies are cited in such regard. This is a case where the petitioner sought a transfer and worthy administrative grounds have been cited to decline the request. Such aspect of the matter cannot be gone into as the petitioner has not made out a case of the reason furnished in course of declining the petitioner's request to be absurd or without basis.
The only ground urged by the petitioner is of hostile discrimination: that Ghosh and Khan had also requested for transfer and such requests were acceded to, but the petitioner's prayer was rejected. The petitioner now seeks to contend that others were also transferred from North-East Frontier Railway, but it is not possible to examine all the cases particularly when the two best examples have been cited by the petitioner for scrutiny.
In the case of Ghosh, since he was an ex-serviceman and had joined the Railway Protection Force in such category, the rules as to his transfer are not similar to the rules that apply to the petitioner. As far as Khan is concerned, he did make a request for transfer and he has been transferred to the training institute in Gorakhpur where 17,000 new recruits are going to be trained and there was a need for adequate training personnel. The petitioner cannot claim to have been on the same footing as those two.
3Since the reasons furnished by the Railways in declining the petitioner's prayer are not shown by the petitioner to be baseless and the reasons indicate the application of mind to the petitioner's request and the consideration of the administrative factors in rejecting the same, the petition is found to be unmeritorious.
WP 30700 (W) of 2014 is dismissed, but this order will not prevent the petitioner from seeking an inter-zonal transfer after a reasonable period of time which the respondent authorities should consider in accordance with law.
There will be no order as to costs.
Certified website copies of this order, if applied for, be urgently made available to the parties upon compliance with the requisite formalities.
(Sanjib Banerjee, J.)