Cancellation of a promotion order causing civil consequences without providing an opportunity of hearing violates principles of natural justice. Additionally, in inter-district transfers, past service must be counted for eligibility and qualifying service.

Judgment On Board

1) By way of this petition, the petitioner has sought following reliefs:-

“(i) That, this Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to quash/set-aside impugned order 18.10.2022 (Annexure P-1) and petitioner may be allowed to continue in the promotion post, in the interest of justice.”

2) Learned counsel appearing for the petitioner would submit that the petitioner was appointed on the post of Assistant Teacher (Panchayat) vide order dated 01.05.2005 and his services were regularized with effect from 01.05.2007 vide order dated 06.10.2008. He would further submit that the petitioner was promoted to the post of Head Master Primary School vide order dated 03.10.2022. It is argued that the District Education Officer Rajnandgaon without affording any opportunity of hearing cancelled the order of promotion vide order dated 18.10.2022. He would contend that pursuant to order of promotion, the petitioner had assumed the charge and thus, right was accrued in his favour. He would further submit that as there are civil consequences of cancellation of order of promotion, therefore, the District Education Officer was under obligation to afford opportunity of hearing to the petitioner.

3) On the other hand, learned State counsel would oppose the submissions. He would submit that the seniority of the petitioner was wrongly reckoned from 30.07.2006 and due to such mistake, order of promotion was passed in favour of the petitioner. He would contend that when the respondent authorities detected this mistake, immediately thereafter order of promotion was cancelled. It is also contended that the services of the petitioner were transferred from District Gariyaband to District Rajnandgaon and therefore, the petitioner was placed at the bottom of the seniority list.

4) On the other hand, learned State counsel would oppose.

5) I have heard the learned counsel appearing for the parties and perused the documents placed on record.

6) It is a well-settled principle of law that in case of transfer of services of Government servant from one district to another district, his seniority has to be considered from initial date of his appointment as held by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the matter of Dwijen Chandra Sarkar Versus Union of India reported in (1999) 2 SCC 119, wherein paras 17, 18 & 19 held as under :

“17. On the facts of the present case and especially in view of the aforesaid decisions, we are of the view that when the transfer is in public interest and not on request, the two employees transferred cannot be in a worse position than those in the above rulings who have been transferred on request and who in those cases accepted that their names could appear at the bottom of the seniority list. Even in cases relating to request transfers, this Court has held, as seen above, that the past service will count for eligibility for certain purposes though it may not count for seniority.

18. Hence the transfer order and circular concerned of 1983 which required that the past service should not count for seniority, cannot have any bearing on eligibility for time-bound promotion. Seniority and time-bound promotions are different concepts, as stated above.

19. For the above reasons, we hold that the past service of the appellants is to be counted for the limited purpose of eligibility -for computing the number of years of qualifying service, to enable them to claim the higher grade under the Scheme of Time-bound Promotions.”

7) In the present case, the petitioner was granted promotion to the po