Santosh Singh Golia v. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research & Ors.

1. Exemption allowed subject to all just exceptions.

2. Application is disposed of. CM APPL. 68929/2024

3. This is an application by which the petitioner seeks revival of WP (C) 9688/2022, which was dismissed by a Coordinate Bench of this Court by order dated 20 November 2023, albeit with certain incidental observations in the penultimate paragraph of the order. The petitioner seeks to rely on the said observation as a ground to seek revival of the petition.

4. We have heard Mr. Somnath Mukherjee, learned Counsel for the petitioner, at some length.

5. WP (C) 9688/2022 challenged judgment dated 9 March 2022 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal[1] in OA No.397/2022. That OA, in turn, assailed an order dated 26 November 2021 whereby the petitioner was transferred from the Department of Bhartiya Nirdeshak Dravya[2] to Centre for Calibration and Testing[3] in the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research[4]. The Tribunal, while rejecting the challenge to the transfer order, noted the petitioner’s contention that she be assigned duties commensurate to her status and issued an advisory in that regard.

6. Aggrieved by the said decision, the petitioner approached this Court by way of WP (C) 9688/2022. By judgment dated 20 November, 2023, the said writ petition has been dismissed. However, while dismissing the petition, this Court returned the following observations:

“the Tribunal”, hereinafter 2 “BND” “CFCT” “CSIR”

7. The above order was challenged by the petitioner before the Supreme Court by way of SLP (C) Diary No.4389/2024, which was also dismissed by the Supreme Court on 26 April 2024, specifically stating that the Supreme Court did not find a case for interference with the judgment of the High Court to have been made out.

8. Aggrieved by the fact that she was not being assigned duties commensurate to her status, the petitioner filed Contempt Petition (C) 1637/2024 before this Court. That Contempt Petition was withdrawn by the petitioner on 16 October 2024. Though the petitioner sought liberty to file a revival application before this Court, the learned Judge while dismissing the Contempt Petition did not grant any such liberty. The last two paragraphs of the said order whereby the contempt petition was permitted to be withdrawn, are reproduced as under:

9. The petitioner has now approached this Court by way of a revival application seeking revival of WP (C) 9688/2022.

10. It is not the petitioner’s case that the order dated 20 November 2023 by which WP (C) 9688/2022 was disposed of suffered from any error apparent on the face of the record. Nor does the petitioner seek to make out any other ground on the basis of which the said order can be reconsidered. The grievance of the petitioner, regarding the work assigned to her, constitutes an entirely new cause of action.

11. Reserving liberty with the petitioner to agitate the said cause of action, if so advised, in accordance with law, we decline to interfere with the present application, which is accordingly dismissed.

C. HARI SHANKAR, J.