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Union of India and Ors. v. Vinod Kumar and Ors.

Dismissed
Court
Supreme Court of India
Decided
15 July 1996
Bench
K. Ramaswamy, G. B. Pattanaik
Result
Appeal dismissed.

Headnote

Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 : Section 5-D (7)(a}-Proviso.

Service Law-Recntitment-Promotion-Rules and orders regard-in[j""Departures from-Pennission for-Prior pennission of Central Gove1n-ment-He/d necessary Fx post facto approval given for promotion made in deviation of mies held not valid in law-Direction given by T1ibunal for issue of Notification for fresh recnlit1nent in accordance with mies held valid.

Headnote as published in the Digital Supreme Court Reports by the Supreme Court of India. Paragraph references point to the judgment below.

Judgment

Delay condoned.

Leave granted.

We have heard the learned counsel.

The only short question is whether the deviation from rule of granting promotion of 50% of the quota gi,ing 2 years additional benefit to the Upper Division Clerks is valid in law? Sub-section (7)(a) of Section 5-D of the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 provides method of recruitment as under :

'7(a) The method of recruitment, salary and allowances, discipline

and other conditions of service of the Additional Central Provident Fund Commissioner, Deputy Provident Fund Commissioner, Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner and other officers and employees of the Central Board shall be such as may be specified by the Central Board in accordance with the Rules and orders applicable to the officers and employees of the Central Government drmving corresponding scales of play.

Provided that where the Central Board is of the opinion that it is necessary to make a departure from the said rules or orders in respect of any of the matters aforesaid, it shall obtain the prior approval of the Central Government."

Under the proviso, where the Central Board is of the opinion that it is necessary to make a departure from the said rules or orders in respect of any of the matters enumerated above it is mandatory that it should obtain prior approval of the Central Government. Admittedly, prior approval was not obtained. On the other hand, ex post facto approval was obtained but in the teeth of the language of the proviso ex post facto approval is not an approval in the eye of law. Under these circumstances, the Tribunal had rightly held that the approval was not valid in law and the matter was kept at large and directed the appellant to issue notification afresh for recruit-ment in accordance with rules. We do not find any illegality in the order.

The appeal is accordingly dismissed. No costs.

Case details

Arising from

CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Civil Appeal No. 9817 of 1996.

From the Judgment and Order dated 4.10.95 of the Central Ad-ministrative Tribunal, Chandigarh in 0.A. No. 1002/PB/94.

Appearances

R.V. Reddy, C.V.S. Rao and T.C. Sharma for the Appellants. Ms. Meera Agrawal and R.C. Mishra for the Respondents.

Source: Supreme Court of India, Digital Supreme Court Reports, via the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (CC BY 4.0). Text was extracted from the official PDF and may contain conversion errors. Check the official PDF before relying on it.