Hon'ble Suneet Kumar,J.

Hon'ble Shiv Shanker Prasad,J.

1. Heard Sri P. C. Dwivedi, learned counsel for the petitioner and Sri Arun Kumar Gupta, learned counsel appearing for the respondent-railways/ Union of India.

2. The instant writ petition is directed against the judgment and order dated 18th November, 2021 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Allahabad Bench, Allahabad (for short ‘Tribunal’), in Original Application No. 330/00092/2020 (Vijay Dwivedi Vs. Union of India & others), whereby the claim of the petitioner for appointment has been rejected.

3. The admitted facts inter se parties is that Railway Recruitment Board, Government of India, Ministry of Railways notified Advertisement No. 01 of 2014 dated 18 January 2014, inviting applications for the posts of Assistant Loco Pilot.

4. It is not disputed that the petitioner qualified the written examination and was declared successful in the Psychology Aptitude Test. However, petitioner could not qualify the medical test for the reason that petitioner had earlier undergone Lasik Surgery of his eyes. Feeling aggrieved, petitioner challenged the rejection order before the Tribunal by filing Original Application No. 330/01161/2017. The said application came to be allowed on the ground that the advertisement did not contain any specific provision that the persons who have undergone Lasik Surgery are not eligible for the post of Assistant Loco Pilot. Accordingly, by judgment and order dated 06 February 2019, the learned Tribunal quashed the impugned order dated 06 September 2017, and directed the respondent-Railways to reconsider the case of the petitioner as per the Medical Standards indicated in the advertisement within a period of three months.

Neutral Citation No. - 2023:AHC:72110-DB

5. Pursuant to the order of the Tribunal, the respondent-Railways again rejected the medical fitness of the petitioner on the same reason that petitioner had undergone Lasik Surgery, therefore, was not eligible for the post. Aggrieved, petitioner challenged the order dated 31 May 2019, before the Tribunal, which came to be rejected by the impugned judgment.

6. Learned Tribunal in paragraph 7, 8 and 9 assigned the reasons for not accepting the contention of the petitioner. Para 7, 8 and 9 of the impugned judgment is extracted hereinbelow:-

"7. The sole issue before us that whether the lasik surgery person can be declared unfit purely on this ground when he meets all other criteria for the post of Assistant Loco Pilot for which he applied and was selected and found fit in all other respects. It is not disputed even by the respondents department that the advertisement itself only states medical standard to be of A-1 category for Assistant Loco Pilot and does not clearly disqualify the persons who had undergone Lasik surgery. The respondents department could not show us any single document under which they had declared Lasik surgery persons to be not eligible for the post. This situation changed only at a later stage when, based on medical advice, the Railways have taken a clear stand to make Lasik surgery persons ineligible for such posts and have also started mentioning this condition clearly in their subsequent advertisements for these posts. It goes without saying that this policy would have prospective effect and cannot be given retrospective effect. In fact, the Railways own action of starting to indicate the ineligibility of Lasik suregery persons in their subsequent advertisements proves that if such candidates were to be considered ineligible, the condition needed to be specified in the advertisement itself.

Even from the common oint of view, one would think that once a person is fulfilling all the medical standards with regard to the six parameters namely near vision, distant vision, night vision, colour vision, binocular vision and field of vision, he should be considered eligible. That the a