Panchayat Secretary before the BDO at the first instance and the BDO had rejected it by his order dated 13.03.2008 which is Annexure 7 to the writ petition. The Panchayat Secretary took no remedial steps to challenge that order which was statutory order made as an appellate authority. Instead of going pursuant to the order of the BDO, they surreptitiously filed a report before the BDO and the BDO, forgetting that he had exercised the powers as a statutory appellate authority, without notice to any party, without hearing any one, recalled and set aside his earlier order and restored the selection process. Such a process, in our view, is not only unauthorized but unknown to law. When BDO passed the first order on 13.03.2008 after hearing the parties, he had passed the order as a statutory authority exercising power under Rule 18 being the appellate authority. That order may have been wrong or right, it matters little. It was a final order. Once that order was passed, he became functus officio. The Rules do not confer any power of review much less a substantive review. Thus, clearly the order of the BDO dated 31.05.2008 was an order which was void ab initio. The learned Single Judge failed to notice this aspect of the matter.
