By the Court.—Heard learned counsel for the appellant, learned Standing counsel for respondents and perused the record.

2. This intra-Court appeal under Chapter VIII Rule 5 of Allahabad High Court Rules, 1952 (hereinafter referred to as “Rules, 1952”) has arisen from judgment and order dated 7.8.2018 passed by learned Single Judge dismissing appellant’s writ petition No. 16915 of 2018 challenging order of transfer dated 31.5.2018.

3. It is not in dispute that order of transfer has been passed by Competent Authority. Appellant is working on a transferable post and is liable to be transferred and transfer is not contrary to any statutory rules. However, complaint is that transfer is in violation of transfer policy.

4. The employer once possess right to transfer an employee from one place to another, in our view, there is no legal or otherwise corresponding obligation upon him to inform his employee why and in what circumstance an employee is being transferred from one place to another. Shifting and transferring of employee from one place to another involves more than thousand reasons and it is difficult to identify all of them in black and white. The commonest reason may be a periodical shifting of person from one place to another, which does not require any special purpose; the other reasons include necessity of a particular officer at a particular place; avoidance of disturbance or inconvenience in working of the officer on account of a person at a particular place; unconfirmed complaints and to avoid any multiplication thereof; transfer may be resorted to and so on. These are all illustrations. The question whether in any of the circumstances when a person is transferred from one place to another without casting any stigma on him, does it infringes, in any manner, any right of such employee which may cause corresponding obligation or duty upon employer to do something in such a reasonable manner which may spell out either from its action or from record and when challenged in a Court of law, he is supposed to explain the same. In our view, the answer is emphatic No. It is for this reason that in B. Varadha Rao v. State of Karnataka, 1986 (4) SCC 131, Court in para 4 of the judgment observed that transfer of Government servant holding transferable post is ordinarily an incident of service and does not result in any alteration of condition of service to his disadvantage. The Government servant is liable to be transferred to similar post in the same cadre, in normal feature an incident of government service and no government servant can claim to remain at a particular place or at particular post unless of course his appointment itself is to a specified non-transferable post.

5. Even more earlier, in E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamilnadu, AIR 1974 SC 555, Court said :

“It is an accepted principle that in a public service transfer is an incident of service. It is also an implied condition of service and appointing authority has a wide discretion in this matter. The Government is the best judge to decide how to distribute and utilize the services of its employees.”

(emphasis added)

6. In Mrs. Shilpi Bose and others v. State of Bihar and others, AIR 1991 SC 532, Court said that transfer order does not violate any of the legal rights of Government servant since he has no vested right to remain posted at one place or the other and observed as under:

“Transfer orders issued by the competent authority do not violate any of his legal rights.”

7. In view of the aforesaid well settled principles governing the matter of transfer, the consistent opinion of Courts in the matter of judicial review of transfer order has been that the order of transfer is open for judicial review on very limited grounds; namely if it is in violation of any statutory provisions or vitiated by mala-fides or passed by an authority holding no jurisdiction.

8. Since power of transfer in hierarchical system of the Government can be exercised at different level, so