By the Court.—This writ petition is directed against the judgment and order dated 31.5.2012 passed by State Public Services Tribunal, Lucknow (hereinafter referred to as “ Tribunal”) in Claim Petition No. 717 of 2012 whereby it has allowed claim petition of the claimant-respondent and directed petitioner to consider him for promotion by giving benefit of experience he has earned while discharging duties of General Manager pursuant to order dated 29.5.2007 and review application filed by petitioner has also been rejected on 8.10.2012.

2. Learned counsel for petitioner submitted that claimant-respondent was never appointed on the post of General Manager either on officiating basis or ad hoc or in any capacity but in addition to duties of his own substantive post i.e Project Manager, he was directed to look after duties of Office of General Manager untill further order for which it was also mentioned that claimant-respondent shall not be entitled for any financial benefit or otherwise.

3. Hence, there was no question of counting said period when claimant respondent was looking after work of General Manager pursuant to the order dated 29.5.2007 and impugned order passed by Tribunal is clearly erroneous and illegal.

4. Sri Shireesh Kumar, Advocate appearing for claimant-respondent on the contrary submitted that claimant-respondent has actually discharged the functions of General Manager, therefore, Tribunal has rightly directed petitioners to consider the said period as experience on the post of General Manager.

5. Mere discharge of duties of an office in addition to discharge of own duties of substantive post on which one is working is not equivalent to discharge duties on the higher post in a full fledged manner. Claimant-respondent was not appointed on the post of General Manager. Admittedly he continued to remain appointed and posted on the substantive post of Project Manager but in addition to his duties of substantive post of Project Manager, he was permitted to discharge function of higher post. It cannot be equated with the experience gain on the higher post. A similar issue came up for consideration in Division Bench judgment in Smt. Vijay Rani v. Regional Inspectress of Girls School, Region I, Meerut and others, 2007(2) ADJ 473 (DB), where in management asked a senior most teacher to discharge duties of the Office of Principal after retirement of erstwhile principal on attaining the age of superannuation. The Court in para 16 to 20 of the judgment said as under :

“Para-16—From a bare reading, we do not find that it did promote Petitioner-Appellant on officiating basis as Principal of the College. On the contrary, it shows that the Manager of the College directed the Petitioner-Appellant to take over charge as officiating Principal and discharge its duties. Despite of repeated reading of the order, we could not find ourselves in agreement with the learned counsel for the Petitioner-Appellant to read the letter dated 29th June 1988 as order of ad hoc/officiating promotion of the Petitioner-Appellant as Principal of the College. Whenever a person leaves office either on account of retirement, superannuation, leave, transfer etc, he proceeds after giving charge to his successor. Normally a person appointed to succeed in the office or one having a co-ordinate position and status is available to hand over charge, or in the absence of such person, the charge is handed over to the senior most person working in the office. When the Principal of the College was retiring on 30th June 1988, in the absence of any appointment or promotion to the post of Principal, she was required to hand over charge to the senior most teacher, who would have looked after day to day function of the office of Principal. But such a course of mere handing over charge would not result in promotion of such senior most teacher as officiating Principal unless and until an order to this effect is passed. Taking charge of a higher office and discharge i