The central legal point established in the judgment is the importance of affording an opportunity of being heard before taking any action that affects an individual's property rights, as well as the inability to withdraw benefits given by the department without misrepresentation or fraud on the part of the applicant.

Narinder Thakur, Vice-Chairman.—The applicants nine in number through this OA is mainly praying for the two reliefs: "(a) Quash the impugned orders A-l and A-2 issued arbitrarily, mala fiddly and illegally by the respondents; (b) Direct the respondents to keep on paying the proficiency increments/salary to the applicants as heithertofore with arrears and! Interest thereon @ 18% p.a. from the date of amount falling due till the date of realization with all the consequential benefits; (c) Direct the respondents to produce all the relevant documents alongwith their reply for perusal by this Tribunal.........."

2. The applicants are aggrieved by the impugned orders dated 9.5.2005 Annexure-A/1 and 14.9.2005 Annexure-A/2 issued by the respondents whereby they have arbitrarily re-fixed the salary of the applicant to his dis-advantage and resultantly were going to make the recovery from him.

3. The case of the applicant is that he was initially appointed on 22.10.1965 as a untrained JBT and thereafter he was imparted training by the respondent? Department during 1971-1973. Thereafter promoted as Head Teacher in 199^ and accordingly the pay of the applicant was fixed after giving benefit of FR-22(l) (a) in the old pay scale in which the applicant was. It is further stated by the applicant that after the revised pay scales came into force w.e.f. 1.1.1996 the pay of the applicant was accordingly fixed again in accordance with the FR 22 (i)(a)(l). The applicant was further promoted as CHT w.e,f 7.6.2003. The applicant has retired from service on 31.5.2005.

4. It is averred that at the relevant point of time, the appointments of JBT Teacher used to be made first and then appointed incumbents used to be given on the job training with full pay and allowances due to the reasons that there were not many JBT Teacher training centers available. However, the respondent department used to arbitrarily and illegally depute the incumbents for training without having any regard to the date of appointment and the respondent department used to select the teachers for training on the presumption that sending on training at random order will not affect the service conditions, more particularly the seniority of the teachers adversely.

5. On 1.9.1979 and 28.12.1979 (Annexures-A-1 and A-2) the applicant and similarly situated teachers were given running grade w.e.f. the date of initial appointments by the respondent department, meaning thereby that the initial date of appointment, is determinative factor for all purpose, including for grant of proficiency increments etc.

6. On 1.12.1986 the Punjab Government granted seniority to the untrained teachers to its State w.e.f. the date of their appointment. Similar principle was adopted by the respondent department and accordingly on 6.6.1990 the seniority was granted to the incumbents from their respective initial appointments irrespective of their being sent for training. However, this decision was on later date changed without observing principles of natural justice to the dis-advantage of the applicant and the other similarly situated persons and as such the same is not sustainable in the eyes of law.

7. The respondent department vide letter dated 13.5.1983 and 12.4.1990 has directed to count the period of training of the teachers as duty for all intents and purpose. Thus the respondent department took conscious decision to grant revision of pay scales to the teachers vide notification dated 5.5.1989 and sanction of additional increment by way of proficiency set-up (Annexure-6). Accordingly, the applicants and other teachers were granted proficiency set up w.e.f. 1.1.1986.

8. The respondent department vide impugned order dated 8.9.2004 (Annexures-A-1 and A-2 has ordered to recover the said amount as well as to re-fix the salary of the applicants arbitrarily and illegally without affording an opportunity of hearing to the applicants.

9. To the above averments of the applicants, the respondent department has filed