T R KAPOOR Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Civil Miscellaneous Petition has been filed with a prayer for appropriate directions being issued to the State of Haryana as under

(2.) To understand the grievance of the petitioners, it is necessary to set out the background material and the pronouncements made in T.R. Kapoor v. State of Haryana, (1987) 1 SCR 584 and Ashok Gulati v. B.S. Jain, (1987) 1 SCR 603 in favour of the petitioners.

(3.) The petitioners who are Diploma holders initially joined the Class III Engineering Service of the Punjab State in the early fifties and were promoted to Class II service as officiating S.D.Os in the middle sixties and in the case of some of them the said temporary promotion was even earlier. By a Notification dated 27-10-1985 the petitioners and other similarly situated persons were regularly constituted as Class II service officers with effect from 25-12-1970. Further avenues of promotion to them were barred because the State Government construed the Service Rules to mean that without a degree in Engineering, a Class II officer cannot be promoted to Class I service. The said interpretation of the Service Rules was disapproved by this Court in A.S. Parmar v. State of Haryana, (1984) 2 SCR 476. By reason of that judgment, it followed that a degree in Engineering was not an essential per-requisite for a member of Class II service being promoted to the Class I Service.