The main legal point established in the judgment is that the termination of a railway servant's service is valid if no higher authority stood in relation to the plaintiff as the appointing authority.

1. This appeal is by the plaintiff a discharged Railway servant whose suit for damages for wrongful 'removal from the service', has been dismissed by the court below, and the only question is whether the plaintiff was removed from service by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed.

2. The plaintiff V.N. Rama Iyer entered service on 28.5.1921 as a temporary relieving clerk in the South Indian Railway Company. After probation for 3 months he was confirmed as a relieving clerk. He got his first appointment as a station Master on 13.3.1934 drawing Rs. 50 and was still in that cadre when the Government of India acquired the Railway as a going concern. That was on 1.4.1944. The plaintiff was subsequently promoted to Rs. 52 in the scale of Rs. 50-60 from 1.6.1946. On 4.6.1946 the plaintiff was transferred temporarily to the Ernakulam South Station, the post of the Station Master of which had been graded as Rs. 60-70 and he joined duty there on 18.4.1946. But soon thereafter he was asked to leave it and go to Lovedale, a hill station. The plaintiff was unwilling to leave Ernakulam and would not obey in spite of the insistent orders of the District Operating Superintendent (D.O.S.) He refused even to hand over charge to the relieving officer. So charges were framed against the plaintiff accusing him of "grave misconduct" and he was removed from service by Ext. AF order of the District Operating Superintendent dated 30.4.1947 with effect from 10.5.1947. The plaintiff attempted to get the order vacated in appeal before the Chief Operating Superintendent (C.O.P.S.) but failed, vide Ext. AJ order dated 7.8.1947, and he filed this unit on 30.5.1948 for declaration that the order of removal was void and ultra vires and for consequential reliefs.

3. Now, at the date of the order removing him from service, plaintiff may be taken to be a Government servant, who by virtue of S.240(2) of the Government of India Act, 1935, could not be removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed. This appears also to be the position under R.1705(c) of the Indian Railway Establishment Code, Volume I (1951 edition) which runs as follows:

"No railway servant shall be removed or dismissed by an authority lower than that by which he was appointed to the post held by him substantively."

Based on these provisions the plaintiff's case in the court below was that it was the Chief Operating Superintendent who had appointed him to the Station Master's grade and therefore, the order of removal as passed by the District Operating Superintendent, who was lower in rank was ultra vires and void. The court found however that from the date of his initial appointment as relieving clerk in 1921 till he became the Station Master at Ernakulam South, at no time could it be said that any one higher than the District Operating Superintendent stood in relation to the plaintiff as the authority who appointed or promoted him to the various posts he held, and it followed accordingly that the termination of the plaintiff's service by that officer was unquestionable on the grounds advanced. Before us the point is raised by learned Counsel that the plaintiff must be deemed to have been appointed to the Station Master's grade by the General Manager, an officer still higher in rank than the Chief Operating Superintendent when, in 1945, the permanent staff of the South Indian Railway was absorbed in the service of the Government of India after their taking over the Railway and the order of removal was in consequence necessarily bad. Alternatively it is contended that the District Operating Superintendent could make substantive appointments only in grades up to a maximum of Rs. 100 and the grade of the post of Station Master which the plaintiff was holding must be taken to be beyond that maximum. For, according to learned Counsel, a Station Master was capable of rising to a maximum of over Rs. 100 and the actual pay level of the plaintiff was for