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 tow