PROKASH CHANDRA MALLICK,J. - (1.) This is an application under Sec. 19 of the Administrative Tribunal Act, 1985, praying for a direction to the official respondents to - (i) Promote the Computers to the newly created posts of Technical Assistants (TAs). (ii) To cancel the purported memo No. 386 -7P/86 dated 30.3.1988 recommending conversion of the post of Technical Assistants. (iii) To review the recruitment rules of Sr. Research Assistants (SRAS) in terms of the direction of this Tribunal in T/A 18 of 1986 (Annexure 'A') by taking into account 12 sanctioned posts of TAs, and (iv) To cancel the impugned promotion order issued vide memo dated 29.4.1988 (Annexure 'D').
(2.) While admitting this application on 8.6.1988, this Bench passed two interim orders, namely -(i) promotions given to the post of SRA vide Annexure 'D' would abide by the result of the application and (ii) The conversion of the posts of 14 TAs to the posts of Draftsmen (DM), which was still in the stage of proposal, should not be done till the hearing of the application.
(3.) There are five applicants, all being employees of the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation, Calcutta, under the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India. Applicants 1, 2 and 3 are working as Computers and applicants 4 and 5 as TAs. Computers are the feeder posts for TAs while TAs and DMs are the feeder posts for SRAs. Earlier, there was another feeder post of Jr. Research Assistant for the post of SRA. Since the number of posts as DM, JRA and TRAs were 72, 31 and 9 respectively, the promotions to the post of SRA were made in the ratio of 7:3:1. In 1980 -81, the strength of DMs was reduced from 72 to 67. Subsequently, in 1987, 14 posts of TAs and 12 posts of SRAs were sanctioned and consequently the number of post of DMs, TAs and SRAs became 67, 23 and 100 respectively.;