Judgment:
MR. JUSTICE S.D.ANAND, MEMBER(J):-
1. The applicants herein successfully cleared the Limited Departmental Competitive Examination (for short LDCE) for appointment, by way of promotion, to the post of Junior Telecom Officer. The LDCE was held in terms of the relevant rule-formation under the nomenclature of Junior Telecom Officers Recruitment Rules, 1996 notified on 8.2.1998. Bothe the applicants were allotted 1997 as the year of allotment and were granted promotion against slots meant for the year 1997.
2. The pure and simple grievance raised by the applicants is that they ought to have been granted 1995 as the year of allotment.
3. The respondents resisted the relief applied for by averring that the applicants did not submit separate applications in respect of each year of vacancies, as required in terms of Clause 3 of the notification dated 27th November, 1998 issued by Government of India, Ministry of Communications, Department of Telecommunications, Dak Bhavan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi. It was for want of compliance aforementioned that year 1997 was allotted to the petitioners.
4. It is no longer in dispute that a common examination (LDCE) for the years 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998 vacancies, came to be held. The relevant notification, vide which the vacancies were notified, contained following riders:-
“1. Separate applications in respect of each year of vacancies in which the candidates are eligible as per the terms and conditions in column 12 of the relevant Recruitment may be called for.”
5. The copies of applications filed by two applicants have been placed on record at running pages 62 and 63 respectively. The former pertains to applicant No.1-Vijay Kumar Chaudhary; while the latter pertains to applicant No.2-Ravinder Kumar Raina. The former documentation (Col. No. 10 thereof) clearly indicates that the application was made ‘against the vacancies of the years 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998’. In so far as the latter documentation is concerned, it does not, at all, indicate the year of vacancies against which the application was made.
6. It is presently common ground that no independent order providing for the year of allotment came to be issued. It is also beyond the pale of controvery that it is only vide communication dated 10.7.2000 (Annexure D) that the departmental candidates who succeeded at the examination, were deputed for the post-result training and it is therein only that the year of allotment was indicated. It is not in dispute that the year of recruitment noticed in the course of that communication is actually indicative of the year of allotment. The applicants herein are otherwise already in employment since much earlier (15.10.1980, in case of applicant No. 1 and 1982, in case of latter).
7. That documentation does not indicate any reasoning which might have weighed with the competent authority in allotting the year of allotment.
8. What weighed with the competent authority in allotting the year of allotment saw the height of the delay, for the first time, in the course of the counter. In fact, it ought to have been recorded in Annexure D itself. If an impugned order is found to be flawed on account of want of reasoning in support thereof, the legal deficiency cannot be cured by an averment in the counter.
9. The documentation aforementioned does not at all the circumstances under which applicants were denied the earlier year of allotment (1995, as claimed by them). Likewise, it also does not indicate the circumstance under which 1997 came to be fixed as the year of allotment qua them.
10. We would, accordingly, dispose of the O.A. with a direction to the competent authority to have a look afresh on the claim raised by the applicants herein for the allotment of the relevant year. The competent authority may proceed to take a view in the context, completely unfaced by observations which we may have made in the course of this order.
11. In view of the fact that the matter has already been inordinarily delayed, we deem it just and appropriate to order that the exercise must be concluded by the competent authority within two months from the date a copy of this order is presented in its office.
12. There shall be no order as to the costs of the cause in the facts and circumstances of the cause.