T K GEORGEKUTTY Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All these cases relate to the implementation of Ext.P5. G.O.(P) 102/84/PW F & PD dated 4.7.2000 marked in O.P.No.3992/2001. This Government Order is exhibited in all Original petitions. I will refer to this Government Order as impugned Government Order for convenience. As per this Government Order, personnels in different categories in the Public Works and Irrigation Department are ordered to be deployed to local self government institutions. O.P.Nos.3992/2001, 9936/2001, 29165/2001, 30184/2001, 30191/2001, 37287/2001 and 38063/2001 were filed by Asst. Engineers and Asst. Executive Engineers of the Public Works Department. This batch of cases will be described as 1st set of cases. O.P.No.8315/2001 has been filed by Asst. Executive Engineers in irrigation department. This will be described as second set of cases . O.P.No.28909/2000 and O.P.No.31761/2001 were filed by Engineering staff working in Local Self Government Department. These cases will be treated as third set of cases .

(2.) The petitioners in each set of cases have their own grievances with regard to the implementation of the impugned Government Order. Petitioners in 1st and 2nd sets of cases were originally appointed in the erstwhile unified Public works Department. Later, for administrative convenience and also for functional convenience, the unified Public Works Department had been bifurcated into Public Works Department (P.W.D.) and Irrigation Department (I.D.) as per Ext.P1 in O.P.No.3992/01. This Government Order will be referred to as bifurcation G.O. , for convenience. The existing members of staff were given a right to opt for either of these new departments, according to their convenience. The vacancies in the higher caregories arisen after the bifurcation were filled up based on the seniority of the optees in the respective feeder categories. This later resulted in erstwhile juniors who had opted I.D. getting accelerated promotion a compared to their counter parts in P.W.D. Thus persons with less length of continuous service are working as Asst. Executive Engineers of Executive Engineers in I.D. as compared to their counter parts in P.W.D. who are working as Asst. Engineers or Asst. Executive Engineers. This is the background of the grievance of the petitioners in the 1st set of cases. They submit that it may so happen, on implementation of the impugned government order, an erstwhile senior working under his erstwhile junior. This will create heart burn to several.

(3.) Grievance of the petitioners in the second set of cases, the Asst. Executive Engineers belonging to the present Irrigation Department (I.D) is that deployment in terms of the impugned G.O. shall be first, posting those, who had opted in terms of para 12 of the impugned Government Order. These petitioners have not so opted. Therefore, they shall not be deployed to Local Self Government Institutions, if sufficient number of opted candidates are available.