9911796707
TMI Blog1972 (7) TMI 106X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Wireless), in the then State of Bombay, a few days before the Central Government, by an order dated 31st October, 1956, made under Section 115, Sub-section (2) of the State Reorganisation Act of 1956 (hereinafter referred to as the Act'), allotted the respondent to the newly formed State of Mysore. The respondent had been officiating, before their reversion, as wireless operators on a pay scale of ₹ 80-5-100, after successfully passing an examination held in 1955 by the Police Wireless Training center at which the respondent Y.L. Mirajkar secured the 16th Place, the respondent V.S. Bhandari the 30th Place. They were reverted, by the impugned orders, to the posts of police constables on pay scales of ₹ 35-1/2-40. It is obviou ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the reversion orders passed before the allotment orders of the Central Government, partly because the reversion was held to have been ordered for a collateral or extraneous purpose and partly because it had resulted in a discrimination against the respondents struck by Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Even where Article 311 is inapplicable, a reversion order may be vitiated on these grounds. We, therefore, proceed to consider the merits of this double pronged attack on reversion orders. 5. The High Court had found that the reversion orders against the respondents were passed under the erroneous behalf entertained by the authorities concerned in the former State of Bombay that all police officers belonging to the constabulary of t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... facts supported the assertions made on behalf of the respondents that the real object of the reversion was to make available vacancies thus caused in the posts of officiating Wireless Operators in the Bombay cadre to other employees who subsequently, secured these posts although they had obtained lower marks than the petitioners and were junior to the petitioners as Wireless OperatOrs. Even if this was not the real object, but, as the Mysore High Court also concluded from the assertions made in the affidavit before it, the reversion orders against the respondents were based merely on a misapprehension of the purposes and the effect of the Act, such a misapprehension could not provide a reasonable or valid ground for the reversion. The High ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... of power or a Detournement de Puvoir (as it is called in Branch Administrative Law), are terms correctly employed to describe the use of a power in this illegal fashion. It was not necessary for the respondents to go so far as to establish that such misuse took place with the deliberate object of benefiting others at the expense of the respondents, although learned judges of the High Court were inclined to hold, not without good reasons, that such an object may also be there. It was enough to prove, as the respondents succeeded in doing, that the power or reversion was used for a collateral or legally extraneous purpose. 8. The second ground of attack upon the reversion orders was that they resulted in an unjustifiable discrimination ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... for the Mysore State that the subsequent orders passed in Bombay State appointing others, who were clearly junior to and less meritorious than the respondents must be held to be irrelevant in deciding whether the impugned reversion orders had resulted in violations of Articles 14 16 of the Constitution in the case of the Respondents. If, as a consequence of reversion orders, the respondent were denied the opportunities which their juniors in service, who were also below them in order of merit, secured in their stead, we think that the conclusions reached by the Mysore High Court, on the strength of relevant date before it, were unassailable. 10. It has also been shown to us, by the learned Counsel for the respondents, that, although t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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