By the Court—Heard the learned Counsel for the petitioner Sri A.K.Pandey and Sri I.P. Singh for the Jal Nigam.

2. The petitioner was appointed as Junior Engineer on 20.1.1978 in the U.P. Jal Nigam. He was promoted as Assistant Engineer on 4.1.1992 and on the post of Executive Engineer on 1.8.1997. The petitioner has been compulsorily retired by means of the order dated 1.9.2005 by invoking Fundamental Rule 56 (C) of Financial Hand Book, Part II, Vol. 2 to 4.

3. Admittedly the service record of the last 10 years was considered by the Screening Committee for the purpose of evaluating as to whether the petitioner should be retained in service or he should be compulsorily retired having lost his utility. The criteria for screening was as under :

(i) marks were allocated to Annual Character Roll remarks, category-wise and in case the officer belongs to general category could not or did not acquire a minimum number of marks (9) on the basis of his Character Roll entries, he was liable to be retired compulsorily, which, in the case of an officer of Reserved category were only 6 marks.

(ii) in case the officer had been awarded a punishment of recovery or he had deposited any amount towards recovery, as a result of some fault committed by him during his service period, it would constitute a ground for compulsory retirement.

4. The petitioner was awarded marks as per criteria aforesaid, which were totalled as 5.93. Since the petitioner could not achieve the marks which were minimum fixed for reserved category, the petitioner being of Backward Class, was not found fit for retaining in service. Apart from the aforesaid making, the service record did contain one adverse entry for the year 2001-02. The aforesaid adverse entry has been recorded in terms of the Office Memorandum dated 18.1.2002, which says that some information which was required to be given to the Vidhan Parishad was not given satisfactorily and for that purpose an adverse entry be awarded. An extract of the adverse entry reads as under :

“Ma. Vidhan Parishad ke pratham satra 2001 ke chhathe somvar hetu nirdharit atarankit prashna sankhya-4 ka uttar uplabdha karaye jane hetu shashan ke patra sankhya 5184/28.5.2001 dinank 25 May, 2001 dwara Prabandh Nideshak, Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam, Ayukt Gramya Vikas evam Mukhya Vikas Adhikari, Allahabad ko nirdeshit kiyua gaya tha parantu santoshjanak uttar na prapt hone ke karan shashan ke patra dinank 28.6.2001,15.9.2001 evam 29.9.2001 dwara Prabandh Nideshak,Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam se puah santoshjanak uttar bhejne hetu kaha gaya parantu Sri Hansraj, Adhisashi Abhiyanta, Ati Prakalp sakha, U.P. Jal Nigam, Allahabad dwara prashna ka uttar santoshjanak roop se preshit nahin, kiya gaya jiske karan prashna anubhag, UP.Shashan evam Ma. Sadasya ko uttar nahin bheja ja saka. Falswaroop Ma. Samiti ke samaksha shashan ko saksha dena para.

Uproktanusar prashna ka santoshjanak evam samayantargat uttar na uplabdh karaye jane hetu Sri Hansraj, Adhisashi Abhiyanta, Ati.Prakalp sakha, U.P. Jal Nigam, Alahabad ko “pratikool pravishti” di jati hai.”

5. This Office Memorandum has been annexed alongwith the counter affidavit filed by the Jal Nigam from where the petitioner could know about the said adverse entry, though the petitioner in the writ petition has stated that there was no adverse entry against him. In the rejoinder affidavit, the petitioner has taken the specific plea that this adverse entry was never communicated to him. Sri I.P. Singh looked into the record of the Jal Nigam, which was brought by the pairokar of the Jal Nigam and very candidly stated that the record does not show that the entry was communicated or not.

6. The question as to whether the aforesaid entry was communicated to the petitioner or not is not of much significance, though the record does not show that the said entry was communicated and there is specific denial of the petitioner about the entry being communicated to him, the aforesaid entry even otherwise does not show a