Madras High Court recalls 2019 verdict delivered without serving notice to affected party

The Madras High Court recently recalled a judgement passed in 2019 without serving notice to one of the affected parties..The judgment was passed by a division bench that was led by its then Chief Justice AP Sahi in a case concerning hierarchy of sub-inspectors in the Tamil Nadu police departmentA bench of Justices R Subramanian and K Govindarajan Thilakavadi recalled the December 5, 2019 judgment "in its entirety" after the High Court registry filed a report confirming that B Vivekanandan, who was a respondent in the matter, had not been served with the notice and was therefore, not heard before the verdict was delivered."Once it is conceded that notice was not served on one of the respondents, the order which reverses the order of the writ court has to be necessarily recalled," the High Court said while allowing the review petition filed by Vivekanandan. The original dispute was about the 2007 seniority list of sub-inspectors of the technical department in the State police. One of them, one PK Murugan, filed a writ petition before the High Court in 2013 questioning the seniority list claiming that the list had been devised without assessing the candidates' technical expertise. In 2018, a single-judge presided over by Justice V Parthiban, allowed Murugan's writ petition and directed the police department to rework the said list. However, a group of police personnel, who were adversely affected by Justice Prathiban's order, filed an appeal in 2019. A division bench of the then Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Subramonium Prasad, who is now a Delhi High Court judge, heard the appeal and set aside the single-judge’s order. .The present petitioner challenged this 2019 order, claiming that though he too was one of the respondents in the appeal, he was not heard before the division bench passed its order..In its March 1 judgement, the High Court said that if even one affected person or a party is not heard by a court before passing of orders, such order could not be sustained in law. It, however, also said that that since several persons were party to the case, it would not be possible to recall the 2019 verdict only with respect to Vivekanandan, the present review petitioner. Hence, it proceeded to recall the entire judgment."The next question that would arise is whether the order could be re-called only in respect of the petitioner or in its entirety. Since it is a matter concerning seniority of a bunch of persons, who were appointed as a Sub-Inspector (Technical) in the Police force in the same recruitment, recalling the order in respect of one person alone would not be a correct resolution. Proviso to Order 9, Rule 13 of the Code envisages such situation and empowers the Court to re-call the entire decree. A Writ Appeal being an appeal filed under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent, Proviso to Order 9, Rule 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure will apply. Hence, exercising the power under Proviso to Rule 13 of Order 9, we re-call the entire judgment," the Court said. Advocate M Radhakrishnan appeared for the review petitioner, B Vivekanandan. Senior Counsel B Kumar and advocates S Sivakumar, L Chandrakumar, M Radhakrishnan, KM Ramesh appeared for the respondent police personnel in the review petition. Additional Advocate General S Silambanan and Additional Government Pleader LSM Hasan Fizal appeared for the Tamil Nadu government and the State police. .[Read Judgment]