An employee cannot be transferred without consent, and statutory provisions enabling transfer must be subject to employee's consent.

Rajiv Sharma, J.

Petitioner was appointed as Beldar in the respondent-University in the year 2004 on compassionate grounds. Petitioner is aggrieved by the issuance of office order dated 30.4.2014, whereby her services have been placed at the disposal of Animal Husbandry Department on secondment basis. It is averred in the reply that in sequel to Notification dated 22.12.2012, total cadre strength of University has been fixed at 1403, which includes the core strength of category ‘D’ staff as 250 only. 62 category ‘D’ employees including the petitioner have been placed on secondment basis with the Animal Husbandry Department. The authority to send an employee/teacher by the University on secondment basis / Foreign Service by the University has been derived from clause 7.11 (iv) of the Statutes.

2. Petitioner is merely working as a Beldar. It is stipulated in clause 7.11 (v) of the Statutes that the employee at the time of transfer or on Foreign Service/ deputation should hold a substantive post in the University. It is in grey area whether the petitioner is holding a substantive post or not, as stipulated in clause 7.11 (v) of the Statutes.

3. It is settled law by now that an employee can not be sent on deputation without his/her consent. The petitioner is working in the respondent University and transferring her to Animal Husbandry Department would amount to change in the Department/cadre, which is not permissible under law.

4. Their Lordships of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Jawaharlal Nehru University v. K.S. Jawatkar, 1989 (1) Supreme Court Cases 679, have held that contract of service entered into by the respondents was a contract with the appellant university and no law can convert that contract into a contract between the respondent and the Manipur University without simultaneously making it either expressly or by necessary implication, subject to the respondent’s consent. In this case, the employee of the university i.e. Jawaharlal Nehru University was transferred to Manipur University without his consent, which was held to be bad in law. Their Lordships have held as under:

“[7] In this appeal the main contention of the appellant is that the respondent was appointed at the Centre of Post-graduate Studies, Imphal, and when the Centre A as transferred to the Manipur University his services were automatically transferred to that University, and consequently he could not claim to be an employee of the appellant University. The argument proceeds on the assumption that the Centre of Post-graduate Studies at Imphal was an independent entity which existed by itself and was not a department of the appellant University. The submission proceeds on a fallacy. The Centre of Postgraduate Studies was set up at Imphal as an activity of the appellant University. To give expression to that activity, the appellant University set up and organised the Centre at Imphal and appointed a teaching and administrative staff to man it. Since the Centre represented an activity of the appellant University the teaching and administrative staff must be understood as employees of the appellant University. In the case of the respondent, there can be no doubt whatever that he was, and continues to be, an employee of the appellant University. There is also no doubt that his employment could not be transferred by the appellant University to the Manipur University without his consent, notwithstanding any statutory provision to that effect whether in the Manipur University Act or elsewhere. The contract of service entered into by the respondent was a contract with the appellant University and no law can convert that contract into a contract between the respondent and the Manipur University without simultaneously making it, either expressly or by necessary implication, subject to the respondent's consent. When the Manipur University Act provides for the transfer of the services of the staff working at the Centre of Post-graduate Studies, Imphal, to employm