Delhi HC refuses to stay appointment procedure for DMRC MD, issues notice to govt

The Delhi High Court on Thursday refused to stay the procedure of appointment of Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the Government of National Capital Territory Delhi's notification in this regard.

The bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh after taking note of the submission issued notice to the Centre and the Delhi Government in the matter and listed it for April 29, 2022, for further hearing.

The plea sought direction to declare that the upper age limit for the post of Managing Director-DMRC, which is not only extremely specialized and requires the most competent and experienced person but also an unreserved and sole post; cannot be arbitrary, irrational and discriminatory.

It also sought to declare upper age limit for the post of Managing Director shall be uniform (60 years) and candidates who were eligible on the date of vacancy i.e. October 1, 2021, shall be eligible to apply for the post.

The petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, practising lawyer and BJP leader stated that, as per the advertisement, the tenure of the post of five years and the date of superannuation of 65 years is uniform for both internal candidates as well as external candidates and there is no provision for extensions of tenure on a later date.

The plea further stated that the state government extended the tenure of the present Managing Director four times under the garb of non-availability of a suitable candidate but suddenly reduced the maximum age for applicants from other Metros such as Lucknow Metro, Chennai Metro, etc where candidates with desired skills are working at senior positions and could be potential applicants.

"Hence, this notification is manifestly arbitrary, irrational, unfair and brazenly violates Articles 14, 16, 21," the plea said.

"It is very necessary to state that the DMRC had issued two other notifications recently for similar board-level posts- Director Finance and Director Operation but those notifications had no such age discrimination. It appears that the State government has changed the norms in impugned notification to appoint a particular person as Managing Director of the DMRC," it further said.

"Requirements of tenure and superannuation are uniform for external and internal candidates. Thus, the external candidate must have 7 years of time left to reach the age of retirement while the job is only for 5 years. The external candidate is thus expected to retire at 63 years and not 65 years. It is evident that there is a mismatch or discrimination," the plea added.

Further, the plea stated that it will increase the workload of the organization which would, in turn, be taxed on the common man.

"This will also reduce the basket of candidates for selection and decrease the possibility of choosing the candidate best suited for the post. In fact, it is blatantly obvious that this is being done to favour one internal employee, as many internal candidates have more experience than him, and have a retirement age of 62 years for Board level positions," the plea stated.

( With inputs from ANI )

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