T.A. Vasudevan vs The Chairman and The Spices Board, Ministry of Finance

J. Chelameswar, C.J.—Aggrieved by judgment dated 1st July, 2010 in W.P.(C) No. 31272 of 2005, the unsuccessful petitioner therein preferred the present writ appeal.

The appellant was working as Public Relations Officer in the Spices Board, a statutory body constituted under the Spices Board Act, 1986. He retired from service on 31.3.1996. Claiming promotion as Assistant Director, the appellant herein made a representation which was rejected by Ext.P3 order dated 4.3.1997 after his retirement. Challenging the legality of the said rejection the appellant had earlier approached this Court by way O.P . No. 11138 of 1997. By judgment dated 28th June, 2005 the said original petition was disposed of. It appears that in the said writ petition a submission was made by the appellant herein that promotions were given by the employer to persons who were similarly situated as the appellant herein though they did not have the requisite qualifications for being promoted. By the abovementioned judgment this Court directed the employer to reconsider the matter after affording an opportunity to the appellant herein to point out similar instances, if any, in support of his claim. The case of the appellant was considered and rejected by the employer.

Therefore the appellant is again back to this Court. By the judgment under appeal a learned Judge of this Court recorded that some of the promotions referred to by the appellant herein as promotions of persons who are identically situated with the appellant were promotions granted not by the Spices Board, but by the Cardamom Board which was one of the predecessors in interest of the Spices Board and the said Cardamom Board was not a statutory body. The promotions effected by such a body were also long before the claim of the appellant arose, i.e. in the years 1974 and 1985. The other set of promotions relied upon by the appellant were three promotions granted in the year 2004 by the Spices Board, i.e. eight years after the retirement of the appellant.

We are of the opinion that the appellant cannot base his cause of action on events that took place long after his retirement from the service. Secondly, assuming for the sake of argument that the case of the appellant and the cases of the abovementioned three persons do have some similarity, it is not the existence of similarities alone that constitutes them into a class. That they were employed at different periods of time by the same master can in a given case be a distinguishing feature. The learned Judge by the judgment under appeal recorded that the employer has convincingly explained the reasons which prompted them to relax the eligibility criteria for promoting the abovementioned three persons in the year 2004. In the circumstances, the appellant cannot claim to belong to the same class with either set of the employees who were promoted at different periods of time.

In our opinion, the judgment under appeal does not call for any interference. The writ appeal is dismissed at the admission stage.