Important Point
Where CAT ordered to treat Volunteers, employed by Eastern Railway as temporary casual employees from date of termination of service but granted pay and allowance from date of judgment of CAT, they cannot claim benefit of pay and allowance payable to casual employees right from the day they were granted status of casual employees.

Judgment

Nanavati, J.-The appellants were employed as Volunteers by the East­ern Railway to help the staff to check ticketless travel. They were paid Rs. 8/- per day. They had worked as such for a long time without a break. By an order dated 31.1.86, the D.R.M., Sealdah withdrew the scheme of utilising services of Volunteers. The appellants, therefore, challenged that order before the Central Administrative Tribunal. The said order was set aside and the Railway Administration was directed to treat all of them as casual employees with temporary status.

2. Inspite of that order, the Railway Administration did not treat them as temporary employees and extend the benefits available to temporary employees. Therefore, they filed O.A. No. 439/88 before the Tribunal. That application was heard alongwith O.A. Nos. 139 and 420/88. All the three applications were disposed of by the Tribunal by a common order dated 31.7.90. The relevant part of the order is quoted below :-

“22. After giving our anxious consideration to the facts of these three cases, the materials on record and the submissions of the learned counsel for both the parties, we find merit in the contention of the applicants that the respondents have sought to avoid implement­ing the judgment in Samir Kumar Mukherjee’s case by denying all the benefits specified in that judgment to the applicants. Since, in view of the special circumstances of the cases, the applicants were held to be casual employees with temporary status, entitled to the same serv­ice conditions as other temporary railway employees, there cannot be any question of absorbing them as casual labourers as `fresh facts’ as that would be contrary to the judgments in Samir Kumar Chatterjee, Debabrate Banerjee and Dhruba Kumar Das (supra). Hence, the impugned Annexure-F dated 30.10.87 to CA 139 of 87 has to be quashed.

23. In view of our discussion above, we allow these applications and give the following directions :-

(i) Annexure-F dt. 30.10.87 to OA 139 88 is hereby quashed.

(ii) All the applicants in OA 139 of 88, OA 439 of 88 and OA 420 of 88 shall be treated as casual employees with temporary status w.e.f. 25.3.86, 3.10.86 and 25.8.87 respectively and their service conditions will be governed by the relevant rules of the Railways.

(iii) Their fitment as such casual employees against appro­priate posts shall be done by the respondents on the basis of their qualifications and experience from the aforesaid dates within four months from the date of communication of this order.

(iv) As regards pay and allowances, they will get the said bene­fits from the date of this judgment as the Tribunal has earlier held while ordering reinstatement of the applicants that they would be paid daily wage of Rs. 8/- as was being paid before their dis-engagement. However, those of the applicants who have already got any benefit in respect of pay and allowances before the passing of this judgment shall continue to enjoy the same.

3. It appears that pursuant to this order of the Tribunal, the Railway Administration of Asansol Division fixed pay of the applicants in one of those applications notionally, with effect from the date on which they were granted temporary status by the Tribunal. As that benefit was not extended by the Sealdah Division to the appellants, they approached the Tribunal by way of O.A. No. 1197, 1240 and 1243/93 and prayed for a direction to the Union of India and the railway authori­ties to extend similar benefit to them. The Tribunal dismissed those applications and therefore the applicants are now before this court.

4. It was contended by the learned counsel for the appellant that once the Tribunal by its order dated 31.7.90 declared that the appellants were to be treated as casual employees with temporary status, w.e.f. 25.3.86, 3.10.86 and 25.8.87, as the case may be and that their service conditions shall be governed by the relevant rules of the Rail