Allahabad HC Mandates Equal Fairness in Engineer Deputation

The Allahabad High Court has delivered a directive to the principal secretary of Public Works Department (PWD) in Uttar Pradesh to facilitate executive engineer Md. Firdos Rahmani's deputation to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The court underscored the necessity of fair treatment by the state, emphasizing equal treatment for equally placed individuals.

The decision was set forth by Justice Manish Mathur of the Lucknow bench on July 18, based on Rahmani's plea for a No Objection Certificate (NOC), which he claimed was unjustly denied on the pretext of a shortage of executive engineers. The court observed that a similar benefit was previously granted to another engineer, Sudhir Kumar Bharadwaj, rendering the denial to Rahmani both discriminatory and arbitrary.

Justice Mathur's ruling highlighted a constitutional breach of Articles 14 and 16, concerning equality before the law and equal opportunity in matters of public employment. The court has ordered the PWD principal secretary to issue the NOC within 10 days to allow Rahmani to assume his role as Deputy General Manager (Technical) at NHAI.

(With inputs from agencies.)