PATHAI Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BY Ext. P-4 Circular No. 45772/sdi/83/gad dated 19th january, 1984, the Government directed the Heads of Departments and appointing authorities not to relieve, until further orders, those physically handicapped persons who had been appointed in government service under R. 9 (a) ( i ) of the General Rules and who had to their credit one year of total government service (including broken periods) as on 5-1-1984 in one or more categories of posts in the same or different departments. They were also directed to re-appoint, in the existing vacancies or by creating supernumerary posts, subject to the conditions laid down in Para. 2 of G. O. (P)No. 25/82/fad dated 27-1-1982 those physically handicapped persons coining under the category referred to above, if they had already been relieved from service.

(2.) THE appellant-petitioner being a handicapped person who had not bad to his credit one year of total government service (including broken periods) as on 5-1-1984 filed the writ petition contending inter ali a that Ext. P4 circular was arbitrary, discriminatory and unreasonable. THE writ petition having been dismissed, this appeal has been preferred.

(3.) WE do not find any force in this contention. WE have already noticed that in terms of the rule under which the appellant-petitioner was appointed provisionally, he was not entitled to continue in service, as a matter of right, after the expiry of the maximum period allowed by the ruled. 5-1-1984, we are told is the date on which the Council of Ministers took a decision to allow the continuance in service of all handicapped persons in provisional service who had to their credit one year of government service. It has to be borne in mind that these persons happened to be appointed mostly in connection with the observance of 1981 as the international Year of the handicapped persons, and that fact appears to have weighed with the Government in deciding that those who had Jo their credit one year of total service (including broken periods) as on 5-1-1984 were to be allowed to continue in service. Ext. P-3 Circular No. 24956/sdi/82/ead dated 16th February 1982 discloses this anxiety on the part of the Government.