§ SIR SEYMOUR KING (Hull, Central)To ask the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the Secretary of State's attention has been directed to the Memorial addressed to him of Mr. C. W. Allan, an extra Deputy Conservator of Forests in the Burma provincial service; whether Mr. Allan, after passing through the college at Dehra Dun joined the Indian forest service on 1st February, 1887, at a time when it was provided by Section 21 of the then Forest Department Code that after five years approved service as Sub-assistant Conservator of Forests he would be drafted into the upper controlling staff; whether, in 1891, the Government issued a new Forest Department Reorganisation Scheme debarring all officers thenceforward appointed in India from promotion to the upper controlling staff, and whether, having done four years of admittedly approved service, the new scheme was by ex post facto ruling arbitrarily applied to Mr. Allan's case; whether recently the Secretary of State for India has sanctioned the transfer of Mr. Shrish Chandra Chakrabatti from the provincial to the Imperial engineering service on the ground that, as he had actually entered the Sibpur Engineering College before the issue of the orders closing the Imperial service to students of Indian Engineering Colleges, he had 1638 an equitable right to an appointment in the Imperial service; on what ground, in an analogous case, Mr. Allan has been refused similarly equitable treatment; and whether the Government of India will be directed to remedy the injustice from which Mr. Allan is suffering.
(Answered by Mr. Buchanan.) The memorial in question has not yet reached me from the Government of India, through whom under rule it has to be submitted, and consequently, I am not in a position to express any opinion on the merits of the question. I assume that the memorial will shortly be in the hands of the Secretary of State.