1. ' SARDAR MUHAMMAD SHAME KHAN, ACTG. C. J.-The petitioner is an employee of the Municipal Committee, Muzaffarabad. Originally, he was appointed as a Junior Clerk and it was during process of promotion that he reached the post of Secretary. His appointment as Secretary was made on 1- 12-1976 in NPS 16, and again, the grade of Secretary was raised to NPS 17, as the Secretary, Mirpur Municipal Committee enjoyed the latter scale and it was so done in favour of the petitioner on basis of principle of parity. But the Government reduced his pay so as to be placed in NPS-11 vide order dated 19-2-1978. Against this order of the Government, a review petition was filed to the Government which, it appears, has not as yet been decided by the Government and now the petitioner does not seem to press that application before the Government as, according to him, it was made mistakenly on the assumption that his case of degradation fell within the purview of Services Tribunal and so this petition, they say, had to be filed belatedly. Furthermore, it is also asserted by the petitioner that his designation as Secretary is going to be converted into Superintendent so as to give justification to his degradation from NPS 17 to NPS 11. Thus, the petitioner prays that the impugned order dated 19-2-1975 be held illegal for being mala fide and for having been passed without affording him an opportunity of being heard ; and that the said order is against the Fundamental Right No, 4(2) guaranteed by the Constitution and so also void and that in case of intended action of the Government, there is no provision in the present law concerned so as to change his designation i,e, nomenclature of the post of Secretary to that of Superintendent.
2. ' The learned counsel for the petitioner was heard.
3. ' It was argued by the learned counsel for the petitioner that as no opportunity was given to the petitioner so as to be heard before reducing his pay, the impugned order cannot stand in law.
4. ' The impugned order does not concern the petitioner alone. The Government considered the case of pays of all the employees of the Municipal Committees set up by the Government in the territory under its control and then passed the impugned order in reducing the pay of a lot of servants of the Committees including Secretaries.
5. ' To see this as to why this action was taken by the Government, the relevant file was called for.
6. After perusal of the file submitted to this Court by the Department concerned, we find that the Government, in order to ascertain irregular appointments and promotions to employees of the Committee during the tenure of previous Government, appointed a Committee consisting of Revenue Commissioner and Secretary of the Local Government Department, former also being the controlling authority of the Municipal Committee. In this case, Punjab Municipal Act, 1911 stands applicable in connection with the affairs of the Municipal Committee which Act now stands repealed by Ordinance No, LXXXVI of 1979, called the Azad Jammu & Kashmir Local Government Ordinance.
7. ' The appointment of a Secretary of a Municipal Committee is to be made by the Committee itself vide section 38 of the Municipal Act. There is no fixed or prescribed scale of pay for a Secretary of the Committee to be employed as such. It depends upon the funds of the Committee so as to give remuneration to its employees. Thus, it is and was for the Committee to fix the pay of its employees so as to bring it within its scope of income and expenditure-expenditure on the pays of the employees and for the betterment of the people living within municipal area in shape of cleaning drains and constructing streets etc. It is why that there is no given scale' of the employees of the Committee and the Committee is empowered further to reduce pay of an employee already fixed by the Committee. Under section 42 of the said Act, the Committee is empowered to reduce remuneration of its employees on requirement by the Commissioner if found excessive and wherein it is also provided that if the Committee does not agree with the requirement of the Commissioner sent to it, it may appeal against any such requirement to the State Government and the decision of the State Government on any such appeal thereof shall be final.
8. ' Under section 237 of the Municipal Act, the Government had powers of supervision, direction and control over its Officers. The Commissioner being an Officer of the Government, the latter i,e, the Government has a full administrative grasp over the acts of the Commissioner which is a controlling authority of the Municipal Committees. The Commissioner alongwith another Officer of the Department concerned, constituting a Committee set up by the Government, held an inquiry with regard to looking into affairs of the Committees. It was found by the said Officers constituting the Inquiry Committee, as to what was the actual staff required by the Committees and further as to what was the proper remuneration to be paid to the employee of the Committees keeping in view the financial position of the Committees. Thus, to achieve economy in matter of expenditure, it was also judged b them in respect of each Committee where it stands. The pays of all the Secretaries of the Municipal Committees were recommended to be reduced to NPS-11 which is assigned to Secretary of Municipal Committee, Gujar Khan in Pakistan, Rawalpindi and some other Municipal Corporations or Committees of big administration which the petitioner wants to bring parallel, in respect of his claim, to the Committee at Muzaffarabad, cannot be admitted by any reasonable person. The secretary of Municipal Committee, Muzaffarabad cannot rationally be eqated with the Secretaries on Municipal Corporation, Rawalpindi or Municipal Committee Abbottabad or some other place except Gujar Khan and that is also one of the richest Committees.
9. These are big Committees with huge administration having nothing parallel in points of income and expenditure to the Committee at Muzaffarabad. The Municipal Committee, Muzaffarabad was hardly found to meet the expenditure on the remuneration of its servants and practical) there remains nothing for the. Committee to look after the welfare and betterment of tax-payers. In these circumstances, there was no need for the Committee or the Government to give a notice to the petitioner so as to be heard before reducing his remuneration.
10. ' Moreover, the appointment of the petitioner was not made by a competent person. He was first appointed secretary by the Minister Municipalities on 1-12-1975 and then very soon he was raised to the next higher grade, namely, NPS 12. Minister nowhere figures so as to be the appointing authority of any of the employees of the Municipal Committees. That being so, the appointment of the petitioner as Secretary Municipal Committee was illegally made by a person who had no authority to appoint him as such. For the very appointment of the petitioner being invalid a Secretary of the Municipal Committee, it has nothing therein under la to prompt us to invoke our writ jurisdiction in favour of the petitioner. It would he deemed that it was on the requirement of the Commissioner with the approval of the Government that the Municipal Committee was directed to reduce the remuneration improperly assigned to the petitioner. If the Committee was of the view that the remuneration was not to be reduced, it could have come up before the Government on behalf of the petitioner and legally we do not think that the petitioner has a right to approach a Court of law in the instant matter. We think that the Committee accepted the decision of the higher authorities, one of them being its Controlling Officer on whose requirement, the Committee was supposed to reduce the remuneration of the petitioner including many others. It seems to us from the perusal of the record that undue favour was shown to the petitioner by a Minister who was not at all competent to appoint him or to raise his grade of pay in any manner under law. The impugned order of the Government was sent down to the Committee for compliance which, it appears, was accordingly complied with by the Committee, thus putting the Committee to act under section 42 of the Municipal Act. Impliedly, the act of the Committee in reducing the remuneration of the petitioner, would mean that the Committee had very well acted under section 42 of the Municipal Act in obedience to the order of the Government which was transmitted to the Committee as required by the Commissioner under the same section. No violation of any fundamental right could be pointed out by the learned counsel for the petitioner and in the circumstances, we are also unable to find any violation of the fundamental right guaranteed to the petitioner under the Constitution.
11. We now turn to the next point of the learned counsel for the petitioner. It is with regard to change of nomenclature of the post of the Secretary to that of Superintendent. It was urged by the learned counsel for the petitioner that as the nomenclature of the Administrator has been changed to that of Chief Officer, the petitioner is also labouring under an impression that his nomenclature would be changed. According to the learned counsel for the petitioner, there is no provision in law for the change of nomenclature of the post of the Administrator and so it would not be difficult for the Government to change the nomenclature of the post of Secretary to that of Superintendent as it was done in case of Administrator. The learned counsel for the petitioner is wrong to say that there is no provision in law to call an Officer as Chief Officer. Section 2 of the Ordinance clearly envisages that any officer including the Deputy Commissioner of the district concerned can also be named as Chief Officer whereas in case of Secretary there is no provision in law for calling him by any other name and this post exists very much there. Thus, we cannot believe that the Government would do anything against law so as change the nomenclature of the post of the Secretary without a legal sanction behind.
12. ' Thus, for the reasons above, this writ petition is dismissed in limine.