Madras high court slams government for taking 17 years to frame adhoc rules
Chennai: Castigating the state government for taking 17 years to frame adhoc rules relating to promotions to librarians, the Madras high court has set aside an order of a single judge, which held that the reversion of four district library officers is justified.
Allowing the appeals from N. Manigandan, C.Asokan and V. Madeswaran and a petition from A.P. Sivakumar, a division bench comprising Justices K.K. Sasidharan and R.Subramanian said, “We hope and pray that the State would wake up from its deep sleep like that of the mythical Kumbakarna at least in future and follow the directions issued by the courts and the Tribunals without any delay so that such litigations would be avoided in future at least”.
The bench said the appellants were not promoted to the post of district library officers (DLOs) from the post of librarian grade I, but were directly recruited to the said post. Therefore, while fixing the seniority for the post of librarian Gr.I in the year 2012, the names of the appellants should not have been included since, they had ceased to be the employees of the local library authority and they had already joined the new service as DLOs under the education department.
Once it was found that the appellants’ appointment as DLOs was pursuant to direct recruitment, the appellants cannot be reverted in the rank of librarian Gr.II and Gr.III since they had ceased to be the members of service of local library authorities on their appointment as DLOs, the bench added and imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 each payable to the three appellants and the petitioner.
Recording its displeasure as to the manner in which the entire issue was handled by the state government and the authorities, the bench said a policy decision to provisionalise the service of the local library authorities and to bring them into one single unit was taken by the government as early as on December 11, 1989 and the adhoc rules were framed only in the year 2006, i.e., nearly after the lapse of 17 years, this exhibits the callous indifference shown by the officials of the state government.
As early as in 1995, the state administrative tribunal had observed that the framing of the rules should not be unduly delayed. The tribunal specifically observed that administrative decisions which involve change in service rules should be followed up by necessary changes by way of amendment without any undue delay. Despite the said fact, the government has taken 17 years for framing rules, as a result of which the appellants had been running from pillar to post right from 2007 till date, the bench added.
The bench said, “We are pained at the attitude exhibited by the state machinery in not even framing the adhoc rules for 17 years. In our considered opinion, this failure on the part of the state machinery to do its duty has led to this long drawn litigation resulting in waste of court hours on trivial issue of promotions and seniority”.
