1. The petitioner by filing the instant writ petition claimed to declare the promotion of respondent No. 3 to all posts since 1979 illegal and in his place to consider the petitioner's case for promotion and also for a direction to the respondent Nos. 1 and 2 to promote the petitioner to the post of Superintendent (Commercial & M.A.) from the date of promotion of respondent No. 3 to the post of Assistant Manager (Commercial) and also declare the decision of the Departmental Promotion Committee (for short 'DPC') taken on 12.5.1997 as illegal and non-est along with other prayers.

2. Heard Mr. D.K. Biswas, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr. S. Saha, learned counsel for the respondent Nos. 1 and 2 as well as Mr. S. Deb, learned senior counsel, assisted by Mr. S. Choudhury, learned counsel for the respondent No. 3.

3. A brief note on the factual aspects required for decision is narrated herein under :

On 1st January, 1975 the petitioner, a Graduate, joined as Daily Rated Worker (DRW) under the Tripura Small Industries Corporation Ltd., a Govt. of Tripura undertaking (for short herein after referred to as the 'Corporation') and was working exclusively in the Store as Assistant Store Keeper. On 6.11.1978 he was appointed regularly as Store Keeper-cum-Clerk with a regular pay scale and the petitioner was always understood from the activities of the Corporation that the seniority of its employees would be considered streamwise. But in the year 1979 suddenly the authority picked up the respondent No. 3 for promotion to the post of Store Keeper and deviated from the policy of promotion streamwise seniority basis, though the respondent No. 3 is only Higher Secondary passed and was appointed initially as Accounts Clerk in his stream completely different from the stream of the petitioner, store keeping. On such promotion the petitioner felt aggrieved being the senior most in the stream of store keeping and protested the said promotion of the respondent No. 3. Replying to the protest of the petitioner, respondent No. 2 the managing director of the Corporation informed the petitioner vide letter dated 18.9.1979 (Annexure-1 to the writ petition) that the Corporation made promotion on the basis of "seniority in service" and not "streamwise seniority at work". Again, in the year 1982 by memo dated 9.12.1982, the Corporation published a draft streamwise seniority list and proved its earlier statement regarding the policy of promotion to be untrue and baseless. Soon after publication of the draft streamwise seniority list the petitioner made representation pointing out that the earlier stand of the Corporation at the time of promoting the respondent No. 3 as Store Keeper was unfair and illegal, which deprived the petitioner of his due promotion to the post of Store Keeper. But despite said representation the said draft seniority list streamwise was finally published on 28.3.1986 and in the said final seniority list also the petitioner was shown against serial No. 1. In the year 1989 while the Corporation sought to fill up the post of Store Keeper by way of direct recruitment ignoring the petitioner's claim for promotion, he filed a writ petition being Civil Rule No. 258/89 and during the pendency of the aforesaid Civil Rule the petitioner was propitiated by providing graded scale of Store Keeper vide Order dated 28.1.1992 and was asked to withdraw the writ petition and accordingly, the petitioner did not press the same.

The Board of directors of the Corporation constituted a review DPC which made its recommendation on 12.5.1997 for promoting the respondent No. 3 to the post of Assistant Manager (Commercial) and Deputy Manager (Commercial) along with Store Keeper of graded pay scale and consequent thereupon in spite of not being eligible he was promoted both to the post of Assistant Manager (Commercial) and Deputy Manager (Commercial) against the ST vacancy as exchange method within a span of a day suppressing the fact relating to pendency of a

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