Subrata Rajbanshi And ORS v. The Lieutenant Governor And ORS

IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA

[CIRCUIT BENCH AT PORT BLAIR] ...

WP.CT/12/2024 Subrata Rajbanshi and others Vs.

The Lieutenant Governor and others Mr. Bharat Bhushan ... for the petitioners Mr. Dibesh Dwivedi ... for the respondents.

[on behalf of Mr.S.Chakraborty] February 7, 2024 [SR] Item No.3 The 10 petitioners before us have challenged the order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal on 22nd January, 2024. Most of the petitioners before us were applicants before the Tribunal. The petitioners prayed for a direction on the respondent no.1, the Lieutenant Governor, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, to enhance the age limit upto 8 years for general candidates for recruitment to the post of Graduate Trained Teacher (G.T.T).

The Tribunal dismissed the application on the ground of maintainability holding that the petitioners had not exhausted the alternative remedy. The Tribunal relied on sections 20(1)(a), 20(1)(b) and 21(1)(b) of the Administrative Tribunal Act, 1985.

We note that there is no section 20(1)(a)/(b) in the Act as recorded in the order.

We, however, find that section 20(1) contains a bar against admitting an application unless the Tribunal is satisfied that the applicant had availed of all the remedies available to him under the relevant service rules as to redressal of grievances. Section 20(2) provides the situations where the person shall be deemed to have exhausted the

remedies. Section 20(2)(a) applies where the Government or other authority competent to pass such order has made a final order rejecting any appeal or representation made by the person concerned in connection with the grievances; section 20(2) (b) contemplates a situation where the authority has not made a final order on the representation and the period of 6 months from the date on which the appeal/representation was made, has expired.

Section 21 deals with limitation and sub-section (1)(b) of Section 21 applies where the period of 6 months had expired from the date of making an appeal/representation and an additional period of one year has also expired from the date of expiry of 6 months.

Section 21(1)(b) would be relevant to the facts of the present case since admittedly, there is no final order made by the Government/Competent Authority on record. We find that there were 3 representations filed by 3 of the applicants before the Tribunal which were on record before the Tribunal. The applicant Nos.2 and 5 before the Tribunal are 2 of the petitioners before this Court. Both of these representations were made before the petitioners approached the Tribunal.

We find that one of the representations was also made to the Lieutenant Governor. Admittedly the Competent Authority did not respond to either of these representations by passing any final order or otherwise.

The impugned order indicates that the Tribunal proceeded on the absence of any representations made by the applicants before it and hence invoked sections 20 and 21 of

the Act to hold that the Original Application was not maintainable since the applicants had not exhausted the alternate remedy provided under the Act.

The Tribunal also interpreted the word "ordinarily" under section 20(1) as a complete embargo to any exception to Section 20(1) of the Act. Contrary to such interpretation, we find that the online application for the G.T.T. post was to start from 9th December, 2023 till 30th December, 2023. The petitioners approached the Tribunal at the earliest available opportunity with their grievance. Hence, the word "ordinarily" in section 20(1) should have been interpreted taking into account the practical realities and in favour of the petitioners. We accordingly hold that the Tribunal's interpretation was erroneous on the facts which were before it.

As stated above, the Tribunal, for some unknown reason, ignored/discounted the representations made by the petitioners. The consequent finding of non-maintainability of the OA is also erroneous.

We find these grounds to be sufficient for interfering with the impugned order.

We have not gone into the other contention with regard to the merits of the matter or the power of the authority to relax the upper age limit or the petitioners' entitlement to the same on account of the 7 years gap in between since we have only dealt with the issue of the maintainability. WP.CT/12/2024 is accordingly allowed and disposed by setting aside the order of the Tribunal dated 22nd January, 2024.

In view of our finding that sections 20 and 21 will not apply to the facts of the present case and further that the word 'ordinarily' in section 20(1) cannot possibly mean a complete embargo in the facts of the case, we hold that the original application was maintainable. The Tribunal is accordingly directed to decide the matter on merits with regard to the prayers in the original application. The respondents herein shall file their affidavit-in-opposition to the original application within 7 days from today; reply, if any, be filed within 3 days thereafter.

The Tribunal shall decide the original application within 4 weeks from the date of completion of affidavits. Since we are informed that the respondents will publish the final selection list on 12th February, 2024, the petitioners are given leave to approach the Tribunal for necessary interim relief.

Parties to act on a server copy of this order duly downloaded from the official website of the Hon'ble High Court at Calcutta.

( Moushumi Bhattacharya, J. ) ( Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, J. )