The Madras High Court has set aside an order passed by its Registrar General on October 15, 2018, re-fixing the seniority of the court staff and elevating a woman employee’s name in the seniority list over and above 88 others in order to grant her promotion to the post of Sub Assistant Registrar (SAR).
A Division Bench of Justices M. Venugopal and Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy held that the R-G’s proceedings refixing seniority, in deference to a decision taken by a Promotion Committee comprising High Court judges, suffered “from an illegality in the eye of law”.
The judges directed the R-G to place their judgment before the Chief Justice for constituting another committee of judges to take a relook into the issue of refixing seniority after affording an opportunity of hearing to the woman employee concerned as well as all other employees who might get affected due to such refixation.
“The matter is remitted back for de novo consideration in a fair, just, valid, unbiased and dispassionate manner,” the Bench stressed. The judgment was delivered while allowing writ petitions filed by 22 of the 88 employees who had been reportedly pushed down in the seniority list due to the preference given to the woman employee, K. Ezhili.
Though the woman gave three representations at different points of time to refix her seniority, all of them were rejected and she did not challenge the rejection orders. After about eight years, she made a fresh representation on April 13, 2017, which was considered in her favour by the Promotion Committee, which refixed the seniority.
“This court is of the opinion that by virtue of the refixation of seniority...without providing an opportunity to the petitioners to submit their grievances, the interest of the petitioners is seriously affected and much prejudice has been caused to them.”
