JUDGMENT Hon’ble Sudhir Agarwal, J.—Aggrieved by the order dated 4.8.2008 passed by District Basic Education Officer, Allahabad transferring the petitioner from Primary School, Chanaini to Primary School, Shiv Ka Pura in the same Development Block, i.e., Pratappur, the petitioner has filed the present writ petition stating that the same amounts to casting stigma upon the petitioner and, therefore, is by way of punishment. It is stated that such a transfer cannot be made. 2. I am afraid. The argument has no substance. A perusal of the order shows that the petitioner and one other, Smt. Nirmala Misra, Head Master of the Institution had some personal dispute, which resulted in using abusing language etc. in the school premises itself and in these circumstances, the petitioner as well as said Smt. Nirmala Misra, both have been transferred in public interest and administrative exigency. Smooth functioning of an institution is also an administrative exigency and for that purpose, if some employee is causing some inconvenience, to transfer him to another place is well recognized mode to meet out the administrative exigency. The administrative exigency cannot be defined since it depends on the situations and circumstances before the authority concerned necessitating or requiring him to pass an order of transfer. It would be useful to refer at this stage some of the observations explaining various incidents of administrative exigency in the matter of transfer by a Division Bench of this Court (in which I was also a Member) in the case of Uma Shanker Rai v. State of U.P. and others, Writ Petition No. 243 (S/B) of 2007 decided on 31.7.2007 as under : “Shifting and transferring of the employee from one place to another involves more than thousand reasons and it is difficult to identify all of them in black and white. The commonest reason may be a periodical shifting of person from one place to another, which does not require any special purpose; the other reasons include necessity of a particular officer at a particular place; avoidance of disturbance or inconvenience in working of the officer on account of a person at a particular place; unconfirmed complaints and to avoid any multiplication thereof, transfer may be resorted to and so on. These are all illustrations.
These are all illustrations. The question as to whether in any of the circumstances when a person is transferred from one place to another without casting any stigma on him, does it infringe, in any manner, any right of such employee, which may cause corresponding obligation or duty upon the employer to do something in such a reasonable manner which may spell out either from its action or from the record and when challenged in a Court of law, he is supposed to explain the same. In our view, the answer is emphatic no. It is for this reason that in B. Varadha Rao v. State of Karnataka, 1986 (4) SCC 131 the apex Court in para- 4 of the judgment observed that the transfer of Govt. servant holding transferable post is ordinarily an incident of service and does not result in any alteration of condition of service to his disadvantage. The Govt. servant is liable to be transferred to similar post in the same cadre, is normal feature and incident of government service and no government servant can claim to remain at a particular place or at particular post unless of course his appointment itself is to a specified non-transferable post.” 3. Even more earlier, in E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamilnadu, AIR 1974 SC 555 , the Apex Court held as under : “It is an accepted principle that in public service transfer is an incident of service. It is also an implied condition of service and appointing authority has a wide discretion in the matter. The government is the best judge to decide how to distribute and utilize the services of its employees.” 4. In Mrs. Shilpi Bose and others v. State of Bihar and others, AIR 1991 SC 532 , the apex Court held that the transfer order does not violate any of the legal rights of government servant since he has no vested right to remain posted at one place or the other and observed as under : “Transfer order issued by the competent authority do not violate any of his legal rights.” 5. I, therefore, do not find that the order, impugned in this writ petition, suffers from any illegality or is vitiated on account of mala fide or otherwise not permissible in law. I, therefore, do not find any reason to interfere. 6. The writ petition is dismissed. —————