CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court’s vacation bench has set aside the final gradation list notified by the state government for junior data entry operators (jr DEOs) on September 24, 2020.
The bench of Justice RK Pattanaik delivered the judgment basing on Sanatan Sahoo’s petition that had challenged the final gradation list.
Sahoo joined on a daily wage basis in 1995 and was allowed to work in the PH division and thereafter, as a computer operator in H&UD department from November 6, 2002 and finally, regularised as a junior data entry operator w.e.f. June 30, 2011.
The dispute was related to the placement of Sahoo in the final gradation list of Junior DEOs. Initially, the petitioner was at serial no 1 of the provisional gradation list prepared as on February 1, 2020 but it was followed by final gradation list by placing him below at serial no 17. Sahoo claimed that since he was regularised on June 30, 2011, others, who are juniors to him and joined in 2013 and thereafter, could not have been placed above him in the final gradation list.
The state government claimed that Sahoo’s seniority was counted from his inclusion in the cadre through a Home department resolution dated August 24, 2020, asserting that the Home department, as the CCA, had the authority to decide seniority. However, Justice Pattanaik held that mere departmental opinions from the GA and Law departments do not carry the weight of statutory backing.
“In the present case, no executive instruction has ever been issued but the inter-seniority is being determined on the strength of the opinion of the GA and Law Departments. Therefore, the inevitable conclusion is that the impugned decision vis-à-vis the seniority of Jr. DEOs shall have to be set at naught being contrary to the settled position of law,” Justice Pattanaik observed.