CAT Orders SSO Promotion, Says Level-1 Group C Service In Railway Accounts Office Counts Toward Appendix-III’s 5-Year Eligibility

The applicant joined the Railway Accounts Department in a Level-1 post on 12 May 2017 and was promoted to Accounts Clerk (Level-2) on 14 March 2022.

After qualifying in the 2024 Appendix-III (IREM) examination, he was included in the provisional panel but omitted from the final panel.

The respondents treated his qualifying service as beginning only when he entered the clerical cadre, leaving him short of the required five years.

The applicant challenged that interpretation, relying on the classification of erstwhile Group D posts as Group C.

Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, provides the basis for the Tribunal’s jurisdiction over the application.

Paragraph 4(a) of Appendix-III to Volume I of the IREM, as clarified by the Railway Board’s 2015 corrigendum, requires five years’ continuous service in a Group C post in a Railway Accounts Office, or three years for a graduate; the text does not expressly confine that service to the clerical or ministerial cadre.

The DoPT Office Memorandum dated 30 April 2010 and Railway Board Establishment Circular No. 02/2014 support the classification of erstwhile Group D posts as Group C, while the Railway Board’s communication of 14 November 2022 confirms that Level-1 employees are classified as Group C for the selection scheme addressed in that communication.

The Tribunal also applied the principles that participation in a selection cannot create eligibility contrary to binding rules, and that legitimate expectation cannot override an express disqualification; administrative conduct may, however, inform whether an ambiguous provision has been applied fairly and consistently.

The Tribunal read the 2015 corrigendum’s requirement according to its wording: continuous service in a Group C post in a Railway Accounts Office.

Because it did not specify service in the clerical cadre, the respondents could not add that restriction based only on the functional distinction between Level-1 and Level-2 posts.

The applicant’s earlier Level-1 service was in the Accounts Department and, following the applicable classification, was service in a Group C post.

The Tribunal treated the Board’s separate Level-1 eligibility clarification as contextual support, not as a rule directly governing the examination.

His prior inclusion in the provisional panel did not independently confer eligibility, but the respondents’ failure to identify a rule excluding his Level-1 service made the basis for his omission unsustainable.

It allowed the application, set aside the communication dated 7 October 2024, and directed the respondents to include the applicant in the final panel and promote him as Senior Section Officer at par with the candidates promoted under the relevant order, with consequential benefits admissible under the rules.

Implementation was directed within eight weeks; no order as to costs.