The court held that promotions must comply with the established All India seniority instead of regional seniority, ruling unjust promotions based on outdated practices must be corrected.

ORDER

PRAMOD KUMAR DAS, MEMBER (A):

The applicant, working as Private Secretary (PS), Office of the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Rourkela, has filed this OA stating inter alia that the post of Personal Assistant (PA) is the feeder grade of Private Secretary as per the rules. He is senior to private respondent Nos. 4 to 14 in the grade/cadre of PA. The private Respondents were promoted to the post of PS w.e.f. 14.07.1997. He is entitled to promotion to the said post of PS w.e.f. 02.01.1999, which was also proposed by respondent No.5 whereas he was given promotion to the post of PS w.e.f. 03.07.2017. The proposal was turned down vide communication dated 06.11.2018. According to him, the said order of rejection dated 06.11.2018 being illegal and arbitrary is liable to be quashed with direction to the official respondents to promote him to the post of PS w.e.f. 02.01.1999 or alternatively to consider his promotion to the post of PS w.e.f. 14.07.2005. He has also prayed to declare the promotion of private respondents 4 to 14 to the post of PS w.e.f. 14.07.1997 as bad in law and to modify the final seniority list of PS wherein they were shown to have been promoted to the post of PS w.e.f. 14.07.1997.

2. It is the case of the applicant that he joined as Steno Gr.III on 02.06.1984, promoted to PA on 15.09.2000 which was preponed to 14.07.1997, and his seniority position in the final seniority list of Steno Gr.III circulated on 07.06.2000 was at 33 and in final seniority list circulated on 17.12.2002 at Sl. No. 53. However, names of many of his juniors in the final seniority list of Steno Gr. III circulated on 07.06.2000 were shown in the seniority list of PS circulated on 09.11.2017 as senior to him. While he was allowed promotion to the post of PS, the final seniority list of PA circulated on 17.12.2002 was taken into consideration wherein juniors to him were shown to have been promoted to PS on 14.07.1997 except nine officials, including him. Therefore, the seniority in PS is required to be decided as per the final seniority list of feeder cadre of PA circulated on 17.12.2002, which has been prepared as per Rule 8 of New Stenographer Recruitment Rules, notified on 02.01.1999. Accordingly, applicant has claimed the relief sought in the OA.

3. Official Respondents 1 to 3 filed their counter, at the first instance, questioning the very maintainability of this OA on the ground of delay and laches since the prayer of the applicant is to quash the orders issued in the year 1997 and 2000 and to promote him to the post of PS w.e.f. 14.07.2005.

3.1 Insofar as merit of the matter is concerned, it has been stated that the Employees Provident Fund Organization is a statutory body duly constituted under the provisions of the Employees Provident Fund and Misc. Provisions Act, 1952 and, thus, the conditions of the service of the organization are governed by the provisions of the said Act. In the organization, there are four cadres of Stenographer, viz. Sr. PA, Stenographer Grade-I, Grade-II and Grade-III. In the cadre restructuring, the post of Sr. PA was redesignated as PS, the posts of Steno Gr. I and Gr. II were merged together and redesignated as PA and the post of Steno Gr. III was redesignated as Stenographer. Accordingly, amended rules were made and approved on 29.06.1998, which was notified in the Gazette on 02.01.1999. Earlier, the Stenographer cadre was Region-wise, however, consequent upon restructuring and amendment of the rules, it became All India Cadre. Vide order dated 22.09.1999, the Stenographic posts were distributed among various wings of the EPF Organization.

3.2 In terms o