Petitioners must approach CAT before coming to courts: Ukd HC

The Uttarakhand High Court has asked whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi to move the Central Administrative Tribunal first before coming to the courts directly on service matters.

The court was examining whether any officer can directly approach the high court for redressal of his service matter grievances or he has to first approach the tribunal.

A petition was filed by Chaturvedi, an Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer of Uttarakhand cadre, regarding his poor grading in appraisal report for the year 2015-16, during his deputation in the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi.

Chaturvedi had impleaded J P Nadda, now Union health minister, and certain other senior central government officers as respondents by name alleging that the poor grading was the result of his action against corruption.
 

In his plea, Chaturvedi had cited a number of judgements by the apex court wherein it was held that in spite of availability of alternate remedy, the high court should entertain cases involving violation of fundamental rights and principal of natural justice.

In its order, the high court said, "The fact that in some other cases the court may have intervened cannot advance the case of the petitioner. In this case, at least objection has been raised on behalf of the respondents (central government as a whole), at the earliest stage when the matter came up."

It said any "erroneous entertainment" of any other writ petition will not confer any right on the petitioner to persuade the court to overlook the law laid down by the apex court.

"Therefore, we would think that petitioner must be relegated to approach tribunal under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985," said the order issued by Chief Justice K M Joseph and Justice Alok Singh.

The court left it open to the petitioner to raise all the reliefs before the tribunal.

"We also leave it open to the petitioner to approach this court seeking any relief, which may be rejected by the tribunal on the ground that it does not have jurisdiction," it said.

The Assistant Solicitor General, representing the central government, had raised objection on direct entertaining of Chaturvedi's case in the high court.