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Judgment
Delay condoned.
This petition is directed against orders dated 18.08.2009 and 08.04.2011 passed by the Division Bench of the Madras High Court whereby the writ petition filed by the Petitioners against the order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Madras Bench (for short, `the Tribunal') in O.A. No. 778 of 2006 titled R. Balasubramnian v. Union of India and Ors. was dismissed for non-prosecution and the application filed for restoration of the writ petition was also dismissed.
We have heard learned Counsel for the Petitioners and perused the record.
Although, we are prima facie satisfied that the High Court was not justified in dismissing the application filed by the Petitioners for restoration of the writ petition, which was dismissed for non-prosecution and on that premise, we may have set aside order dated 8.4.2011 and remitted the case for disposal of the writ petition on merits but after having carefully examined the entire record, we are satisfied that the direction given by the Tribunal for promotion of Respondent No. 1 to the Senior Time Scale with effect from 31.12.1998 on regular basis does not suffer from any legal infirmity and, therefore, we do not consider it proper to remand the case to the High Court.
It is neither the pleaded case of the Petitioners nor the learned Counsel could show that the vacancy in the Senior Time Scale was not available at the time of ad hoc promotion of Respondent No. 1. It is also not the pleaded case of the Petitioners that any person senior to Respondent No. 1 had been ignored at the time of his ad hoc promotion in 1998. Therefore, the mere fact that meeting of the DPC was delayed was not sufficient to deny the benefit of regular promotion to Respondent No. 1 with retrospective effect and the Tribunal did not commit any error by directing the Petitioners to promote Respondent No. 1 with effect from 31.12.1998.
With the above observations, the SLP is dismissed.
At this stage, learned Counsel for the Petitioners made a request that six weeks' time may be allowed for the purpose of implementing the order of the Tribunal and, till then, the contempt proceedings pending before the High Court may be stayed.
The request of the learned Counsel is accepted and six weeks' time is allowed to the Petitioners for issuing appropriate order in terms of the direction given by the Tribunal. Till then, the contempt proceedings pending before the High Court shall remain stayed.