MEDHI ALI Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner and the 3rd respondent were members of the Mysore Civil Service. By an order notified on 24th February 1970, the 3rd respondent was appointed by the President of India to the Indian Administrative Service in the cadre of Mysore in a substantive capacity against a vacancy in the senior post, shown in item 3 of the Cadre Schedule, with effect from 29th November 1969. The petitioner, who is admittedly a senior in the Mysore Civil Service, impugns the validity of this order and prays for the issue of appropriate writs quashing the said order appointing the 3rd respondent, to the Indian Administrative Service and directing the respondents, viz., the Union of India and the State of Mysore, to consider the case of the petitioner and to appoint him in a substantive capacity to the Indian Administrative Service cadre post with effect from the date on which it was, according to the petitioner, due to him.

(2.) It is common ground that the appointment of members of the State Civil Services to the Indian Administrative Service is governed by a set of rules called the Indian Administrative Service (Appointment by Promotion) Regulations, 1955, made pursuant to sub-rule (1) of Rule 8 of the Indian Administrative (Recruitment) Rules, 1954. In the last analysis, the case of the petitioner is that the appointment of the 3rd respondent to the Indian Administrative Service and the omission to appoint himself to the said Service is the result of disobedience of the said Regulations or in exercise of the power of selection contrary to the provisions of the said Regulations. The petitioner avers in his main affidavit that he had been included in the list of persons selected for appointment to the Indian Administrative Service prepared in the year 1961, in which the 3rd respondent was placed at a lank below his own, but that when an occasion arose for actual appointment in a vacancy in the Mysore cadre of Indian Administrative Service in the year 1969, the 3rd respondent has been illegally taken to a rank above that of the petitioner and that, therefore, the same amounts to an infraction of his right attributable to his legitimate tank in the list of relative seniority of Officers in the Mysore Civil Service.

(3.) In his affidavit in support of I.A. No.II for the calling of certain records, the petitioner suggests that the only obvious reason for his non-inclusion was the large number of persons belonging to the Muslim Community to which he belongs, having constituted an overwhelming section of the Hyderabad Civil Service, some of whose members including the petitioner became allotted to the new State of Mysore. This has remained a mere suggestion and no attempt has been made to substantiate it.