CAT comes to the aid of polio-hit officer

CHENNAI: The TN bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has come to the rescue of an officer working in the Ordnance Factory in Avadi, by quashing an order transferring him to Uttar Pradesh.S Manivannan, joint general manager of the Ordnance Factory, here moved the CAT to quash an order dated june 23, 2010 of the Ordnance Factory Board in Kolkata transferring him to Ghaziabad in UP.Petitioner submitted that he was 80 per cent affected by ‘post polio residual paralysis’ of both the lower limbs. His seven-year-old daughter also had serious speech and language delays. The doctor had diagnosed that she was suffering from an ‘autism spectrum disorder’ and recommended that she attend special education and speech therapy that would target specific deficits in learning language, attention, compliance and initiative of interaction as early intervention programme. The speech therapy was only in Tamil.Originally, the petitioner was transferred to Dum Dum in Kolkata in 2000 and he worked there for two years. This severely affected his daughter’s intervention programme. The transfer order violated various circulars issued to promote the participation of disabled people, petitioner contended.The authorities submitted that the applicant had been in Tamil Nadu for 16 years. He, being a Group A officer, had all-India transfer liability. The transfer order had been issued as per rules. The station to which Manivannan had been ordered to be transferred had all facilities required for his daughter, they added.Rejecting the submissions, CAT judicial member B Venkateswara Rao said it was really unfortunate that the daughter of the applicant, suffered 80 per cent disability, apart from tuber sclerosis with permanent autism. No doubt the applicant’s services were liable for transfer, but considering the requests of such employees, the Centre had issued guidelines to enable them and their wards to proceed with their treatment. Though the authorities appreciated the applicant’s services, they had not applied their mind on the question of transferring him to such a far off place. The order violated the Centre’s orders and also the dictum of the SC in a catena of cases, the tribunal said, and set aside the transfer order.