S. Seikivasan vs The Chief Commissioner, Government of Pondicherry

Anantanarayanan, J.—The appeal is by a certain Srinivasan from the judgment of the Administrative Court of Pondicherry, declining to interfere with an order of the Chief Commissioner relieving the Appellant from the post of Revenue Department Overseer (Revenue Divisional Officer) with the Supervision Squad of Pondicherry, and posting him instead, to a post in the Registration Office. The facts are admitted that the Appellant entered the Excise department originally through the door of a competitive examination, and that the present transfer occurred in March I960. The Administrative Court (Contentieux Administratif) dismissed the petition of the Appellant, holding that the order of transfer was not of a disciplinary character, but constituted a transfer within a department, and hence did not give rise to any occasion for redress.

We have heard learned Counsel for the Appellant, and we have also been taken through relevant portions of his petition, dated 1st June 1960, in which the facts are set forth, and the other documents in the case; we have further scrutinised the grounds of appeal. We are unable to see any justification for admission of this appeal proceeding, even in limine. For, what the Appellant urges is that this transfer, in virtual effect, has caused him pecuniary prejudice in the sense that he has thereby lost the share that he was getting in transactions of the department (Excise) in the matter of indirect revenues. If this implies that, by any kind of custom which did not have the force of law; there were certain perquisites attached to the office, which the Appellant was receiving and the benefit of which he has lost by the transfer, we can only state that the very recognition of such benefits, or of any such practice, would be against both public morality and administrative propriety. We cannot, for a moment, countenance such an argument in a Court of law.

If this implies, per contra, as the last part of the paragraph, in which the averments are made, seems to indicate, that what the Appellant has lost is revenue from rewards for detection of fiscal infractions, and traveling allowances, the only reply is that there can be no guarantee in respect of such particular rewards attached to an office, or traveling allowance which is supposed to be commensurate with expenses incurred for official movements by the concerned public servant. A public servant may be transferred from a post which involves traveling allowance, to a post which does not involve any such allowance, and which may involve only stationary duties; he may be relieved of tasks of detection which might incidentally earn him rewards, and such grounds will not be grounds on which any Administrative Tribunal would be justified in interfering with the order of transfer. The fundamental administrative canon is that, transfer is not punishment, and that, unless the step taken amounts to true punishment of the public servant concerned, he can have no redress.

For these reasons, we are unable to find any prima facie merits which would justify the reception of this appeal, and it is dismissed in limine, as not maintainable.