JUDGMENT :

Ravi R. Tripathi, J.

The present LPA is filed by the Gujarat Maritime Board and others being aggrieved by judgment and order dated 3.12.2001 passed by this Court in SCA No.1375 of 1988.

2. The learned advocate for the appellants vehemently submitted that the Court ought not have taken upon itself the task of ordering regularisation of service of the opponent/original petitioner on the post of Clerk-cum-Typist more particularly with effect from 11.3.1997 because there is subsisting policy of giving benefits of regularisation, followed by the Board. The learned advocate for the appellants vehemently submitted that this order causes injustice to ten other employees who, according to the learned advocate for the appellants, are similarly situated.

At the outset we must reject this contention of the learned advocate for the appellants. If at all any individual is aggrieved by a judgment and order of this Court, he can always come to the Court either in the same proceeding or by filing substantive proceeding. In the present case, no individual has complained about any injustice to this Court. It is only the Gujarat Maritime Board - the appellant who has chosen to be busy with the litigation of this nature rather than discharging its functions for which it is created by a statute.

3. The learned advocate for the appellants vehemently submitted that the order passed by this Court is not in consonance with the principles laid down by the Honourable the Apex Court in Secretary, State of Karnataka and others v. Umadevi (3) and others (2006) 4 SCC 1. The impugned judgment and order is dated 3.12.2001, therefore the judgment of the Honourable the Apex Court delivered on 10.4.2006 was not available for consideration while delivering the judgment and order under challenge. It is a well settled law that a ruling of the Honourable the Apex Court is prospective in nature unless it is otherwise provided. A Division Bench cannot say that the judgment and order is liable to be set aside on the ground that it is not in consonance with the law pronounced by the Honourable the Apex Court which is of a subsequent date.

4. At this juncture Mr. Nilay Anjaria, learned advocate for opponent/original petitioner, invited attention of this Court to a decision of the Honourable the Apex Court in U.P. State Electricity Board v. Pooran Chandra Pandey and others, (2007) 11 SCC 92. Learned advocate Mr. Anjaria submitted that the principles laid down by the Honourable the Apex Court in Umadevi's(3) case (supra) are explained in a later decision when the Honourable the Apex Court observed that "to take a contrary view would violate Article 14 of the Constitution. We have to read Umadevi(3) case (2006) 4 SCC 1 in conformity with Article 14 of the Constitution, and we cannot read it in a manner which will make it in conflict with Article 14. The Constitution is the supreme law of the law, and any judgment, not even of the Supreme Court, can violate the Constitution".

5. Learned advocate Mr. Anjaria for the opponent/original petitioner submitted that what weighed with the Court while disposing of SCA No.1375 of 1988 by judgment and order under challenge was that four persons junior to the petitioner were regularised by the appellant - Board while the petitioner was denied that benefit for no valid reasons. The Court therefore had passed the order of regularising the opponent/original petitioner.

6. We having perused the judgment and order under challenge feel it appropriate to reproduce the following observations made in paras 3 and 6 which are as under:

"3....The irony stood compounded when it was given out by the learned counsel for the s that the main reason for the petitioner being left out was that there was no award in his favour and that even the order of his appointment as a clerk-cum-typist on a permanent vacant post had had to be cancelled under pressure from the union and the employees who stood above the petitioner in the select list of the beneficiaries