Hon'ble RAFIQ, J.— This writ petition has been filed by petitioner-Virendra Mehta challenging the action of the respondents in downgrading the assessment with regard to his performance in APARs of the year 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 and further praying that such downgrading may be declared illegal and be set aside and the respondents be directed to treat the entries in respect of those years as outstanding/very good for all practical purposes including for consideration of the candidature of the petitioner for promotion to Rajasthan Accounts Service Super Time Scale.

2. Shri M.M. Ranjan, learned senior counsel for the petitioner has argued that the Reporting Officer has given outstanding remarks to the petitioner in respect of APAR of the years 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08. The Reviewing Officer and downgraded those entries respectively to `very good' and `good' in respect of year 2005-06 and 2006-07 and retained `outstanding' entry in respect of the year 2007-08, but the Accepting Officer has further downgraded them to `average' in respect of the year 2005-06 and 2007-08 and `good' in respect of the year 2006-07. Learned senior counsel submitted that as per the judgments of the Supreme Court in U.P. Jal Nigam & Ors. vs. Prabhat Chandra Jain & Ors. (1996) 2 SCC 363 and Dev Dutt vs. UOI & Ors. (2008) 8 SCC 725 = 2008(2) RLW 1669 (SC) which have both been approved by a three judge bench judgement of the Supreme Court in Sukhdev Singh vs. UOI & Ors. (2013) 9 SCC 573, the respondents could not have without notice to the petitioner and without providing opportunity to represent against said downgrading, finally accepted the downgrading of the assessment. The writ petition be therefore allowed in terms of the prayers made above.

3. Ms. Sunita Satyarthi, learned Additional Government Counsel opposed the writ petition and submitted that there was no requirement to inform or provide opportunity of hearing to the petitioner even if the assessment made with regard to him by the Reporting Officer was downgraded by Reviewing or Accepting Officer. The Reviewing/Accepting Officer has given reasonings in support of such downgrading which are mentioned on record. Reference is made to an entry made in APAR of the year 2000-2001, copy of which is placed on record at Annexure-R/1. It was argued that mere giving of `average' or `good' rating by the Accepting Officer, does not tantamount to adverse entries and therefore no opportunity of hearing was required to be given.

4. I have given my anxious consideration to the rival submissions and perused the material on record.

5. A two judge bench of Supreme Court in U.P. Jal Nigam, supra has held that the downgrading by the Review/Accepting Officer in comparing to the previous grading without notice or opportunity of hearing to the employee concerned is illegal, but in Union of India & Anr. vs. Major Bahadur Singh (2006)1 SCC 368 another two Judge bench of the Supreme Court took the contrary view. Subsequent thereto, the two judge bench of Supreme Court in yet another case in Dev Dutt, supra had the occasion to consider the question of communication of the year in the APAR of public servant. In that judgement, the Supreme Court re-visited all its previous judgements and concluded that every entry of APAR should be communicated to the employee within reasonable period, whether it is `fair', `good' or `very good' entry. A three judge bench judgement of the Supreme Court in Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar vs. Union of India & Ors. (2009) 16 SCC 146, approved of the reasoning given by Dev Dutt, supra and held in para 8 as under:-

"Coming to the second aspect, that though the benchmark "very good" is required for being considered for promotion admittedly the entry of "good" was not communicated to the appellant. The entry of `good' should have been communicated to him as he was having "very good" in the previous year. In those circumstances, in our opinion, non-communication of entries in the ACR of a public se

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