A Government employee cannot be transferred to a post outside his cadre or to another department without his consent being taken. A single member bench consisting of Justice Sanjay K Agarwal of the High Court of Chattisgarh dealt with the issue of government employee transfers in the case of Pawan Kumar Sarthi and Others v The State of Chattisgarh and Others [WPS No. 4918 of 2016] on the 10th of June 2021.
The petitioners Pawan Kumar Sarthi, Sunil Kumar Shrivastava, Om Prakash Shrivastava and Rakesh Kumar Sharma are all employees of the Department of Dairy Development, Chattisgarh and were working at the Integrated Dairy Development Project, Raigarh and Jashpur. However they were transferred on 29th July 2016 to the Department of Veterinary Services without taking their consent.
It was noted that the facts in this case were almost the same to that of Ashok Kumar Aasrekar v State of Chattisgarh [WPS No. 1142/2013] where the court had quashed the impugned transfer order and the state was given the chance to take a fresh decision regarding the petitioners in accordance with law. The court also brought up that since much time had passed since the petitioner had been filed, many of the employees were nearing their retirement age and that would also be taken into consideration in the decision that the state was to make. As a result of this, the impugned transfer order in question was quashed as it violated the rights of the government employees who were transferred to another department without their preference being taken into consideration by the state and similarly, the state was given the liberty to take a new decision in the regard.
Justice Sanjay K Agarwal can be quoted as saying “Accepting the contention of the parties, since the issue involved in this writ petition is identical to that of Ashok Kumar Aasrekar, the instant writ petition is allowed in terms of paragraphs 4 and 5 of order dated 15/01/2019 passed in Ashok Kumar Asrekar as notice hereinabove and accordingly, the transfer order is hereby quashed and liberty is granted to the State to proceed in accordance with law as held in paragraphs 4 and 5 of Ashok Kumar Aasrekar”
