SAJJAD M G Vs. STATE OF MYSORE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) On 8 August, 1961 respondent 2 who was a chief reporter in the Department of Publicity and Information was promoted by Government temporarily as Assistant Director of Publicity and Information. The petitioner was then a superintendent in that department. He contends that he should have been promoted in preference to respondent 2, and so, he asks us to issue a writ of mandamus directing his promotion with effect from the date on which respondent 2 was promoted. There is also a prayer that we should strike down as amendment made to the cadre and recruitment rules regulating recruitment to posts in the Department of Publicity and Information under the proviso to Art. 309 of the Constitution. But Sri Ullal, very properly, does not press that prayer. There is a third prayer for the removal of respondent 2 by quo warranto from the post of an Assistant Director of Publicity and Information. In the counter-affidavit produced on behalf of Government of which the deponent is an Under Secretary, it is asserted that the petitioner was act qualified for promotion to the post of an Assistant Director and that on a consideration qualifications of the petitioner and respondent 2 the latter was preferred for promotion. It is emphasized in Para. 6 of the counter-affidavit that since the petitioner was not duly qualified for promotion, his claim for promotion was "found to be untenable."

(2.) The counter-affidavit explains why the petitioner was not qualified for promotion, and that explanation is that whereas the rules made by the Governor prescribe experience in the post of a superintendent during a period of five years as the minimum qualification for promotion to the post of as Assistant Director, the petitioner was a superintendent only for a period of three years, and so, was not qualified. On behalf of the petitioner a reply-affidavit is produced with which we find an extract from the relevant service register recording the service put in by the petitioner in the erstwhile State of Hyderabad from which he was allotted for service to the new State of Mysore under the provisions of the States Reorganization Act. The extract so produced the correctness of which is not controverted, shows that in the State of Hyderabad the petitioner was in the post of a Superintendent from 9 October, 1946 to 28 February, 1949 continuously; he was a permanent superintendent during that period. But on 28 February, 1949 the post of the superintendent was abolished when there was a reorganization of the Department of Publicity and Information in the Hyderabad State, and so; the petitioner was thereafter, until 30 April, 1949, either a clerk or a publicity assistant.

(3.) He was again appointed as a superintendent in the Department of Publicity and Information in the new State of Mysore on 6 August, 1958, and he is still there. So by the time respondent 2 was promoted, the petitioner had put in more than three years of service as a Superintendent in the new State of Mysore and more than two years as such Superintendent in the erstwhile State of Hyderabad in the Department of Publicity and Information.