VIGILANCE MANUAL VOLUME III - AP Online

DECISION - 177
(177)
433
(A) Compulsory retirement (non-penal)
(B) Court jurisdiction
Courts will not go into disputed questions such as
age in cases of compulsory retirement in public
interest.
(C) Order — defect of form
Order not invalidated where three different rules are
mentioned and rules not applicable are not scored
out. Wrong reference to power will not vitiate action.
P. Radhakrishna Naidu vs. Government of Andhra Pradesh,
AIR 1977 SC 854
The petitioners had been retired in public interest after they
completed 25 years of service, under order dated 28-9-75. In the
writ petition, one of the petitioners had urged that he had been
appointed on 10-9-1952 and had not completed 25 years of service
on 23-9-1975 which was the date of the order retiring him. The State
Government, on the other hand, contended that the actual date of
his appointment was 25-7-1950.
The Supreme Court held that in writ petitions the courts are
not expected to go into disputed questions of fact like age as in the
present case. The Supreme Court also observed that “the mere fact
that three different rules were mentioned in the impugned orders
without scoring out the rules which are not applicable to a petitioner
in one case cannot be any grievance for the reason that in each case
the relevant rule is identically worded. The omission on the part of the
officers competent to retire the petitioners in not scoring out the rules
which are inapplicable to a particular individual does not render the
order bad. The reason is that one of the rules is applicable to him and
the omission to strike out the rules which are not applicable will not in
any manner affect the applicability of the rule mentioned”. Further, the
Supreme Court has taken the view that a wrong reference to power