Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)
Sukanta Das vs The General Manager on 16 March, 2022
Author: Harish Tandon
Bench: Harish Tandon
23 16.03. IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA
2022 Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction
Appellate Side.
Ct. No. 04
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Ab WP.CT 10 of 2022 Sukanta Das Vs. The General Manager, Eastern Railway and others.
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Mr. Arunava Ghosh, Mr. Puspal Chakraborty, Mr. Prisanka Ganguly.
... for the petitioner.
Mr. Sanajit Kumar Ghosh.
... for the respondents.
The petitioner was recruited in Group-D post under the sports quota at a scale of pay admissible to such post and later on claimed the additional increment having participated in the Asian Championships. The revised instruction for recruitment of Sports persons - Sports Quota, Sports norms and incentives issued by the concerned Railways on 20th July 2000 contained an exhaustive provisions not only in relation to a scale of pay for Group-D and Group-C post but also recognizing an excellence achieved by such employee in participating the various Championships. Para 9.1 provides three categories of Championships viz. Category-A pertains to Olympic Games; Category-B for World Championships, World Cup, Asian Games and Category-C relates to Commonwealth Championships, Commonwealth Games, Asian Championships. Our attention is drawn to para 8.1, which relates to the power of the Board to fix the pay at the time of initial recruitment of outstanding sports persons through 2 Talent Scouting with an additional increment indicated therein.
What can be seen from the aforesaid provisions is that in order to recognize the excellence achieved by such sports persons, the Board may take a decision either to grant incentives or an additional increment depending upon the performance and other things as the Board may think fit and proper.
The petitioner sought for an additional increment having claimed to participate in well-known National Championships. The application was turned down on 4th July 2018 that the Recruitment Committee did not find the petitioner as outstanding sports person at any point of time and such decision was already communicated to the petitioner in the year 2004, more precisely on 2nd November 2004.
Challenging the said communicating letter rejecting the prayer of the petitioner, the tribunal application was filed, which is dismissed solely on the ground that the petitioner has failed to substantiate his claim for pay fixation to a particular scale as a meritorious sports person.
We do not find any other reasons recorded therein except the same yet the tribunal permitted the petitioner to make a representation after gathering other documents in support of such claim.
At the very outset we must record that once the tribunal or the court found the claim to be unmeritorious, it is not proper to give another opportunity to such unmeritorious litigant to approach the authority for further or fresh decision.
Be that as it may, we noticed two things in the impugned order; firstly, after recording the facts pleaded by the respective parties and the submission so advanced, the conclusion was arrived surreptitiously in 3 paragraph 5 of the impugned order without being supported by any other reasons. Secondly, we find that the communicating letter dated 4th July 2018 is also bereft of any such reasons having assigned except that the Recruitment Committee did not find the petitioner as outstanding sports person when he claimed to have participated in a national level competition and the certificate annexed to the stay application would corroborate the same.
Obviously, in order to arrive at the decision whether a person is an outstanding sports person having achieved excellence, there must be a fix criterion or norms and those must have been reflected in the decision of the authority. What achievement can make a person an outstanding sports personality and what would not should have been reflected in the order while denying the claim of the petitioner. Though a plea has been taken at the behest of the respondents that the authorities have communicated the decision way back in the year 2004 but we do not find any documents forthcoming that the said order was also passed disclosing the reasons and the rejection on merit.
The reason is a heart and sole of any adjudication. The order bereft of reason cannot be said to be an order passed in accordance with law. The litigant has a right to know the reasons for rejection of his claim and equally it imposes an onerous obligation on the part of the authority to disclose such reasons so that a person must know the fate of his claim and the reasons why such claim has not been accepted.
We could have remitted the matter to the tribunal but it would remain an idle formality because we noticed that the decision challenged in the tribunal application is bereft of any reasons and, therefore, we 4 proceeded to interfere with the same. For the reasons stated herein above, the communication letter dated 4tth July 2018 is hereby quashed and set aside. Equally, we set aside the order of the tribunal.
The Recruitment Committee is directed to reconsider the application filed by the petitioner and shall dispose of the same within three weeks from the date of communication of this order by recording proper reasons and it goes without saying that the same shall be communicated to the petitioner within a week therefrom.
The writ petition is, thus, disposed of. We made it clear that we have not gone into the merit and demerit of the claim of the petitioner and, therefore, the said Committee shall be free to take decision without being influenced by any observations made herein above.
(Harish Tandon, J.) (Rabindranath Samanta, J.) 5