Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

It is pursuant to this Cabinet decision dated 06.06.2006, which is not disputed, that the Communication No 1115 dated 14.06.2006 was issued by the Department of Human Resources Development (Higher Education) (Annexure-1 to the first writ petition). This circular clearly states about the decision of the State Government. It clearly states that the Government has taken a conscious decision that the Lab Assistant/Lab Technician/Lab Incharge/Lab Instructor, on acquiring requisite academic qualification, being redesignated as Demonstrator, the post of Demonstrator would continue till their superannuation and upon their superannuation, the post of Demonstrator would stand surrendered. In paragraph-3 of the Circular, it was clearly stated that pursuant to redesignation of these persons as Demonstrators, they would be entitled to all benefits and promotional rights of the Demonstrator. There was no ambiguity in the said communication.

This Circular was clarified immediately on 01.08.2006 (Annexure-2) by the Department. The Department now clarified that to the extent of persons, who were required to be redesignated as Demonstrators in different Colleges, the post of Demonstrator would be deemed to be sanctioned for the period it is occupied by the said redesignated persons whereafter the post would cease. It further clarified that the entitlement to be redesignated as Demonstrator would be from the date they acquired the necessary academic qualification to be designated as Demonstrator. I may observe here that this was so because, as noted above, for some post, the initial qualification was Intermediate but the minimum qualification for a Demonstrator was Graduation and for being promoted to Lecturer, it was Post Graduate with certain minimum percentage of marks that was required. Thus, the clarification that upon acquiring requisite qualification, they would be redesignated as Demonstrators and the benefits would arise from the date they acquire the qualification. This is Memo No 1456 dated 01.08.2006 (Annexure-2). The first writ petition deals with Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University, the facts of which are representative and referred to by this Court.

The effect of the impugned Circular dated 18.12.2008 was two folds. Firstly, the date of entitlement of the pay scale or financial benefits as a redesignated Demonstrator got shifted from the date of acquisition of requisite academic qualification to the date of issuance of letter. The second was that they were not to be treated as Teachers, ignoring the definition of "Teacher" as given under the Bihar State Universities Act, 1976 itself. Thus, they were disentitled to promotion as Lecturer or Reader and in all such cases, they would be demoted back to the redesignated post of Demonstrator as a non-Teacher and, thus, substantially bringing down their remuneration as well. This has been then followed by subsequent Circulars and directives of the State Government and University communications on the same deviant lines which all are under challenge.

The second result would be that they would be entitled to the benefits of Demonstrators not from the date of Cabinet decision nor from the date of any communication issued thereafter but from the day when they acquired requisite qualification for the same as per the conventional decision, which date in cases of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University is to be found in the Office Order No 177 of 2007 dated 05.07.2007. There would be no question of reverting the promoted Lecturers/Readers to the post of Demonstrators or the redesignated Demonstrators to the post of Lab Assistant/Lab Technician/ Lab Incharge/Lab Instructor.