Madurai
The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Friday pulled up the Registry at the High Court Bench here for failing to list for hearing long pending vacate stay petitions.
In a particular case a petition numbered way back in 2012 and a connected petition filed by the School Education Department were not listed for hearing for the past eight years.
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The court was hearing a writ petition filed by S. Thirumalaikumarasamy in 2011, who sought a quash of his transfer order. The petitioner was transferred from the District Library Office, Theni, to the Office of the Director of Public Libraries, Chennai, in 2010 on administrative grounds.
Following a stay on the transfer order, the petitioner managed to remain in the same post for the past eight years.
Justice S.M. Subramaniam observed that it was unfortunate that an interim order was obtained and the petitioner was allowed to continue in the same post for over eight years in spite of the fact that the order of transfer was issued on administrative grounds.
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The court observed that “Post or place can never be claimed as a matter of choice by the employee. High Court cannot interfere with the routine administrative orders. The order of transfer can be challenged on limited grounds. Judicial review against the transfer order is undoubtedly limited”.
“If the High Court interferes with the routine administrative transfer orders issued by the competitive authorities, the same will cause prejudice to the maintenance of efficient public administration by the competent authorities. Thus, the High Court should exercise restraint from entertaining the writ petitions filed challenging the administrative orders of transfer”, the court said.
The court further added, “Writ proceedings against an order of transfer can be entertained, only if the same has been issued by an incompetent authority or with malafide intention or in violation of statutory rules in force. Even in case of malafide intention, the authority against whom such an allegation is raised has to be impleaded as party respondent in the writ proceedings and in absence of any of the above legal grounds no writ petition can be entertained against an order of administrative order”.
Administrative transfer orders can be issued on various grounds and on various circumstances in order to run the public administration effectively and efficiently, the court said.
In the present case, the court observed that since the petitioner had already continued in the same place for over eight years, the authorities concerned were at liberty to transfer the petitioner within a period of four weeks.
The relief sought by the petitioner was dismissed and the court closed the connected miscellaneous petition.