ORDER

1. This order will dispose of Civil Appeal No. 5598 of 2007 filed by one 9 Suresh Chandra and also Civil Appeal No. 4773 of2008 filed by Respondent 8, Ravindra Prasad.

2. This is an inter se dispute between these two officers who were working as engineers in the State of Uttar Pradesh. While the appellant, Suresh Chandra was a directly recruited Assistant Engineer having been appointed on 2-2-1999, the other person, namely, Ravindra Prasad was, however, appointed as a Junior Engineer in the year 1983 on ad hoc basis and was ultimately regularised in the year 1989 as Junior Engineer. Thereafter, he was promoted on 25-5-1995. However, the question is whether this was an ad hoc promotion or a substantive promotion. While Shri Ravindra Prasad claims this to be a regular promotion since it was granted after his selection by the Departmental Promotion Committee, the appellant Suresh Chandra, however, claims that this was an ad hoc promotion.

3. Both these officers were allocated to the State of Uttaranchal as it then was (now State of Uttarakhand). While Shri Suresh Chandra was allocated in his capacity as Assistant Engineer, however, Ravindra Prasad was allocated in his capacity as Junior Engineer because till then he continued to be in the seniority list of Junior Engineers and was not included in the cadre of Assistant Engineer. Be that as it may.

4. Thereafter, a question came as to in what capacity Ravindra Prasad can be accommodated in the State of Uttaranchal. There was lot of correspondence between the newly created State of Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh and as a result the State of Uttar Pradesh then took up the matter, sent it to the U.P. Public Service Commission which again went into the exercise of examining the records of Ravindra Prasad and also interviewed him and ultimately wrote to the State of Uttaranchal that he was liable to be promoted and that he was properly promoted to the post of Assistant Engineer from his post of Junior Engineer. This recommendation of the U.P. Public Service Commission was also granted approval by the Hon'ble Governor of Uttar Pradesh. It is on this basis that the State of Uttaranchal in the year 2006 directed Ravindra Prasad to grant the seniority in the post of Assistant Engineer from 25-5-1995.

5. This was challenged by Suresh Chandra. While in another petition, Ravindra Prasad had also challenged exclusion of his name from the list of Assistant Engineers. Both these petitions came to be decided along with some other petitions by the High Court and the High Court dismissed the petition filed by Suresh Chandra and thereby accepted the position that Ravindra Prasad had to be held senior to Suresh Chandra he having been promoted in the year 1995 and his promotion having been regularised and upheld by the State of Uttar Pradesh as well as the State of Uttaranchal. While Shri Suresh Chandra has challenged this order on various grounds, even Shri Ravindra Prasad has challenged the order on account of an observation made in the said judgment to the effect that Shri Ravindra Prasad was given an ad hoc promotion to the post of Assistant Engineer.

6. Shri Sunil Gupta, learned Senior Counsel urged before us that the very basis of the High Court order was incorrect inasmuch as the High Court went on to apply the rules called the Uttaranchal (On posts Within the Purview of the Public Service Commission) Ad hoc Appointments Regularisation Rules, 2002. Indeed when we see para 3 of the impugned judgment it is found that those Rules are relied upon by the High Court. We have cursorily gone through those Rules and are of prima facie opinion that those Rules may not apply for the simple reason that the Rules did not apply to promotees.

7. Further, we are not at all satisfied with the judgment which is extremely sketchy and skeleton-like without answering a number of issues which could be raised. One of the issues could be as to whether the Uttar a Pradesh Government and more particularly the U.P. Publi