Allahabad High Court: A writ petition was filed by Union of India and the Railway Administration before a Division Bench comprising of B. Amit Sthalekar and Jayant Banerji, JJ., with a prayer to quash the order passed by Central Administrative Tribunal where original application filed by respondent to set aside order debarring petitioner from giving RRB exams, was allowed.
Facts of the case are that respondent applied for the post of Junior Engineer-II (Mechanical), Junior Engineer-II (Mechanical CADCAM) and Junior Engineer-II (Carriage and Wagon) through RRB. Respondent gave a written test in which he was declared passed. After the completion of the verification process when the final results were declared respondent’s name was not found. After inquiry by respondent to the concerned authority he got to know that he had been barred for lifetime from all RRB exams. It was informed to Nodal RRB that RRB Chennai had informed that he had been debarred. RRB Chennai informed him that it had not debarred him but the same had been done by Mumbai RRB. Later, it was found that RRB Mumbai barred respondent on the ground that he submitted two applications with different photographs for post of Apprentice Engineer (Mechanical). Respondent had challenged this order in his application. Petitioner approached Tribunal where Tribunal favoured respondent holding that order of debarment was unreasonable, unjust, and arbitrary and his natural rights had been violated. Therefore, respondent’s original application was allowed and concerned authority was directed to consider the candidature of respondent.
The railway prayed for setting aside of Tribunal’s order on the ground that respondent had committed fraud on Railway Authority by submitting two application. Petitioner submitted that earlier respondent had filed an original application before Chandigarh Tribunal where it was dismissed and thus original application was filed before Central Administrative Tribunal and thus was not maintainable.
The High Court was of the view that Chandigarh Tribunal dismissed the original application with a liberty to file a fresh application and the issues, in this case, were not decided by Tribunal, therefore, this will not act as res judicata. Petitioner failed to show any record when the debarment of respondent was communicated to him. Therefore, the court found no merit in the petition and the petition was dismissed. [Union of India v. Javier,2018 SCC OnLine All 1782, order dated 05-10-2018]
