43 Retired Defence QA Engineers’ Notional-Promotion Case Ends Withdrawn After CAT Declines To Stay DPC Proceedings

Forty-three serving and retired Assistant Engineers (Quality Assurance) filed an Original Application seeking, among other reliefs, notional promotion and a stay of Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) proceedings.

The Tribunal recorded that all applicants had retired, some more than two to three years earlier.

At the first call, it found no ground to grant the requested interim stay and dismissed the OA.

Later, counsel for the applicants appeared and sought permission to withdraw it.

The Tribunal cited no statute, rule, or precedent.

It proceeded on the general proposition that, following retirement, the master-servant relationship between the applicants and the respondents no longer subsisted, and found no sufficient ground for the interim stay sought.

The order also records that counsel sought withdrawal of the OA; it does not set out a separate legal test governing withdrawal.

The Tribunal relied on the applicants’ retirement and the resulting cessation of the master-servant relationship, together with the nature of the interim relief sought, to conclude that no ground had been made out to stay the DPC proceedings.

The order then records that counsel appeared later and sought withdrawal, after which the Tribunal disposed of the OA as withdrawn.

The order does not explain how the later withdrawal request related to the earlier dismissal.

After counsel subsequently sought withdrawal, it stated that the OA was dismissed as withdrawn.

The order does not adjudicate the applicants’ substantive claim for notional promotion.