HYDERABAD: Referring to the two judgments, one delivered by the Supreme Court and the other by the Jharkhand High Court, cited by the Centre on cadre division, the Hyderabad bench of Central Administrative Tribunal on Wednesday asked the counsel for GHMC commissioner Somesh Kumar to answer them by Monday.
These two judgments have become a hurdle to grant any relief to Somesh Kumar who is challenging his allotment to AP cadre.
The Supreme Court made it clear that no bureaucrat had a legal right to demand a place of his choice to work. He has to go wherever he is posted, it ruled.
The Jharkhand High Court held that when a massive cadre division exercise was taken up and as many as 378 All India Service officers were distributed between the two states of Bihar and Jharkhand and except for 17 officers none of them had any grievance. Hence the authorities have to look at the purpose of the whole exercise. In view of the common purpose to be achieved, the authorities can ignore the objections of a few officers however genuine their grievance may be.
While dealing with a batch of petitions filed by several IAS, IFS and IPS officers, who challenged the cadre division exercise taken up by the Centre to divide the cadre between AP and Telangana states, the bench comprising B Venkateswara Rao (member-judicial) and Ranjana Chowdary (member-administration) referred the above two judgments which were cited by the Centre defending its decision on cadre division process.
The bench told the counsel for Somesh Kumar that the authorities had divided as many as 638 All India Services officers between Telangana and AP, and only 16 of them raised objection to their allotment. The whole exercise showed that it was acceptable by a majority of officers except for a few like Somesh, the bench observed.
The Centre had earlier urged the tribunal to look at the general purpose of the whole exercise rather than looking at individual grievances. While posting the petitions to Monday, the bench wanted the counsel for Somesh to answer the orders passed by the apex court and Jharkhand High Court during next hearing.