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3. It is pleaded case of the petitioners that the copies of the APARs were made available in the Month of December, 2012, in response to application(s) under the Provisions of Right to Information Act, 2005, and it was only thereafter the fact of downgraded APARs, by the authorities, without recording any reason plausible and acceptable, surfaced to their knowledge. The fact of downgrading of the APARs, in comparison to the previous year, was never ever communicated to the petitioners.

4. Mr. R. N. Mathur, learned Sr. Counsel, reiterating the pleaded facts and grounds of the writ application, strenuously argued that the petitioners were never communicated of the down-gradation in the APARs. Thus, they were deprived of representation against such downgradation in time much less the relevant time, when such downgradation was resorted to. This act of the State-respondents is an indicative of gross violation of the principles of natural justice, and therefore, the downgradation deserves to be ignored and set aside. Moreover, the downfall from the previous year, recorded in the APARs, is an unreasonable and unjustified and not provided with reasons by the authorities concerned. There cannot be a fall in the qualities of an officer for a limited period and any such entry indicating a down fall, for a short period, in the performance can safely be presumed to be for bias and oblique motives, and therefore, deserves to be ignored on that count alone.

8. Learned counsel for the petitioners have further submitted that since the APARs provide the basic and vital inputs for various purposes, all the employees are expected to undertake the duty of filling out the APAR forms with a high sense of responsibility and within the time schedule, as has been observed by the Hon'ble Apex Court of the land in a catena of cases. To fortify the submissions, reliance has also been placed on the time schedule as provided by Annexure 'A' of the Rajasthan Civil Services (Performance Appraisal Report), Instructions, 2008, wherein the earlier instructions of 1976, have been reiterated.

23. The fact of non-communication of the adverse APARs does not render the report as invalid, and therefore, cannot be ignored as would be evident from the ratio decidendi of the judgment as referred to and relied upon. The petitioners at the most have a right to make a representation against the downgraded ACRs and nothing more. Therefore, the prayer and request for ignoring the APARs is not sustainable in the eye of law. The petitioners now are aware of the adverse APARs and at the most they can be permitted to make a representation.

It has been observed that the APARS of the State Service Officers are sometimes downgraded by Reviewing/Accepting authority, without giving any reasons or justifications and it becomes difficult to properly defend such cases in Courts. The Supreme Court has also recently held that proper reasons must be recorded while down grading the APAR rating of a Reportee Officer. Accordingly it has been decided that the Reviewing/Accepting authorities should invariably record detailed reasons/justifications if APARs of the Reportee Officers are downgraded by them.