1. ' DORAB PATEL, J.-The appellant joined the service of the Education Department of the North-West Frontier Province on 5th May, 1929 and he retired 39 years later on 31st of March, 1968. During his long career in the Education Department, the appellant had experienced many difficulties about his pay and promotion and he was constantly corresponding with the Government about his claims for seniority, pay and allowances. The details of these claims are not relevant to this appeal, and it is sufficient to state that the appellant continued to make representations for his claims to the North-West Frontier Province Government after the break up of One Unit on 30th June, 1970.
2. Therefore, by his letter dated 15th of September, 1970, the Secretary of the Education Department of the North-West Frontier Province Government informed him "as all the cases referred to by you relate to the fixation of your seniority and other service matters you may refer the case to the Civil Service Appellate Tribunal which is being set up by the North-West Frontier Province Government shortly". 1 may explain here that the Civil Service Appellate Tribunal referred to in this letter was the tribunal which was set up under the West Pakistan Civil Services (Appellate Tribunals) Ordinance, 1969 read with North-West Frontier Province Civil Services (Appellate Tribunals) Ordinance, 1971 (N.- W.F.P. Ordinance II of 1971).
3. ' I may pause to observe here that the appellant criticised the advice thus given to him by the Provincial Education Secretary, and though he said that it had misguided him, in fact it had not, because he knew that the advice was not correct, therefore, although he filed an appeal before the Civil Service Appellate Tribunal, he also filed two suits against the Provincial Government for the enforcement of his claims, including his money claims, in the Court of a Civil. Judge. The appellant informed us that these suits had been dismissed by the trial Court on the ground that they had abated under section 8 of the North-West Frontier Province Tribunal Act, 1974 (hereinafter called the said Act). The appellant had, therefore, filed appeals in the District Court against the dismissal of his suits, but as they met the same fate, he filed second appeals in the Peshawar High Court which have unfortunately still not been disposed of. Be that as it may, reverting to the facts of the appeal before us, as I observed, the appellant had filed an appeal before the Civil Service Appellate Tribunal, but the Tribunal appears to have been very slow in disposing of the appeals before it, and the North-West Frontier Province Civil Services Appellate Tribunal's Ordinance was repealed on the 8th of January, 1974. Now, section 10 of this repealing Ordinance prescribed that "all appeals pending before the Tribunal constituted under the North-West Frontier Province Civil Services (Appellate Tribunals) Ordinance, 1971 (N.-W.F.P. Ordinance II of 1971) shall with: effect from the date of the commencement of this Ordinance stand transferred to the appropriate Service Tribunal established under this Ordinance and be deemed as instituted under this Ordinance."
4. Therefore, the appellant's appeal stood transferred to the Appropriate Service Tribunal.
5. ' I may pause to point out here that before this Ordinance lapsed, it was substituted by the said Act, and as this Ordinance and the said Act, as originally enacted, are in pari materia in all particulars relevant to this appeal, nothing turns on the substitution of the Ordinance, 1974 by the said Act.
6. ' In the events that happened, the appellant's appeal came up for hearing before the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunal, Peshawar, on 26th June, 1976. It was opposed by the respondents on the ground that the Tribunal was only competent to decide appeals against orders "fixing the seniority of government servants and its jurisdiction did not extend beyond determining the seniority," and as the appellant's claims in this appeal included claims for compensation, the contention of the respondents was that the appeal was not an appeal which had been pending within the meaning of section 10 (2) of the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunals Ordinance, 1973. As the Tribunal accepted this objection, it dismissed the appeal by its order dated 26th June, 1976.
7. ' The appellant filed a petition for leave against this order, and leave had to be granted because the relief sought by the appellant in his appeal before the Tribunal was relief in regard to his seniority as well as for the consequential money claims.
8. ' Mr. Amirzada did not dispute the appellant's contention that the appellant's claims in his service appeal included claims for his seniority. Therefore, the appellant was right when he submitted that the Tribunal had erred in dismissing his appeal on the ground that it was not a pending appeal within the meaning of section 10 of the said Ordinance. Mr. Amirzada however attempted to defend the impugned order on another ground. This was that the appellant was not a civil servant within the meaning of section 2 (a) of the said Act, or of the said Ordinance, because he had retired on 31st March, 1968, therefore, his appeal was not maintainable.
9. ' This objection is not sound, because as submitted by the learned Deputy Attorney-General, the definition of a civil servant was enlarged by the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunal (Amendment) Ordinance, 1974 (which was later substituted by the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunal (Amendment) Act, 1974), to include a person who "has been a civil servant within the meaning of the North-West Frontier Province Civil Servants Act, 1973". In view of this amendment, Mr. Karamatullah, the appellant, addressed us at length in support of the plea that he was a civil servant within the meaning of the said Act, at least after the amendments to which the learned Deputy Attorney-General drew our attention. However, the learned Deputy Attorney General further submitted that in any event the appeal was hit by clause (c) of section 4 of the said Act, which was inserted in section 4 by section 3 of the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunal (Amendment) Ordinance, 1974, and it is this objection which is fatal to this appeal. Section 4 of the said Act after its amendment reads : "4. Appeals to Tribunals. -Any civil servant aggrieved by any final order, whether original or appellate, made by a departmental authority in respect of any of the terms and conditions of his service may, within thirty days of the communication of such order to him, prefer an appeal to the Tribunal having jurisdiction in the matter : Provided that -
(a) ................
(b) ............
(c) no appeal shall lie to a Tribunal against an order or decision of a departmental authority made at any time before the 1st July, 1969."
10. All the orders by which the appellant is aggrieved were passed whilst h was in service., therefore, as they were necessarily the orders "of a depart-mental authority made before the 1st July, 1969" these orders could not be challenged in an appeal before the Tribunal, and, therefore, the appellant's claims would not fall within the mischief of section 10 of the said Act. This conclusion follows from the plain language of section 4 o the said Act after its amendment by the North-West Frontier Province Service Tribunal (Amendment) Ordinance, 1974.
11. The appellant, who appears to be well versed in the law attempted to get round the plain language of section 4 by advancing an ingenious plea. This was that his appeal was not hit by subsection (c) of section 4, because subsection (0 had been inserted on account of the dismissal of government servants in 1969 by the then Martial Law Government.. I regret to say that the submission is frivolous, and in any event, as submitted by Mr. Irshad Hassan Khan, this Court's judgment in Khan Faizullah Khan v. Government of Pakistan through the Establishment Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and another (1) is fatal to the plea of the appellant.
12. ' As the appeal of the appellant before the Tribunal was hit by section 4 (c) of the said Act, it is not necessary to examine the other submissions of the appellant and it would also not be proper to make any observations about them because of the two appeals of the appellant which are still pending in the Peshawar High Court. The appeal, therefore, fails and is dismissed, but as the grounds given by the Tribunal for dismissing the appeal were not correct, I would leave the parties to bear their own costs. Finally, I thank the learned Deputy Attorney-General for his able assistance.
(1) PLD 1974 SC 291