Express News Service
DEHRADUN: Supreme Court on Monday stayed Uttarakhand High Court’s orders of setting aside the order of Central Administrative Tribunal chairman in which he transferred the case of 2002-batch Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi to the tribunal’s Delhi bench.
The SC also issued a notice to the officer. Tushar Mehta, solicitor general of India appeared for the Union government.
The HC in October 2021 had set aside the orders of the CAT chairman dated December 4, 2020, saying that the order was ‘legally unsustainable’.
Chaturvedi had filed a case before the Nainital Bench of the CAT in February 2020 alleging irregularities in the present system of empanelment at the level of joint secretary and above in the Union government including the recently introduced system of 360-degree appraisal and lateral entry of private-sector experts.
Later, in August 2020, notices were issued by the CAT to Union Public Service Commission and the Uttarakhand state government. The Allahabad bench of the CAT had also granted time to counsel of the Union government to ‘seek instructions’ from the Department of Personnel Training (DoPT) and the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC).
In September 2020, the CAT bench had given the Union ten days’ time to file preliminary submissions after they raised the issue of maintainability. The bench then fixed the date of September 22, 2020, for disposing of the issue of maintainability.
In a dramatic turn of events, the Union on October 13, 2020, filed a transfer petition requesting the transfer of the case from the Nainital Circuit Bench of Allahabad bench to Principal Bench, Delhi which was opposed by Chaturvedi.
On December 4, 2020, the CAT chairman directed the transfer of the petition to the principal bench of the CAT in Delhi.
Chaturvedi challenged this order of the CAT chairman in the Uttarakhand High Court stating that the order dated December 4, 2020, which L Narasimha Reddy passed as the chairman of the CAT is in blatant violation of principles of natural justice – audi alteram partem.
“It is a very strange situation. I fail to understand how it is going to affect Central Government whether the case is heard at Nainital or Delhi Bench as both are part of the Union of India and also why only the case of a particular officer being transferred to Delhi Bench and not of other officers as in every case Respondent is central government?” said senior Supreme Court of India Sudarshan Goyal commenting on the matter.
“The Central Government ought not to indulge in such frivolous litigations, that too against their own employees. This defeated the very purpose for which the Administrative Tribunal Act was enacted and its Benches were set up in different states for the convenience of the employees. The power of transfer should be available only when both affected parties are employees, for example in seniority disputes, not when the contesting party is only the UoI as in the case of Sanjiv Chaturvedi or Alapan,” added Goyal.
