D SUNDER DOSS Vs. TAMIL NADU ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE present writ petition is filed by 16 unsuccessful applicants whose application has been dismissed by the Tamil Nadu Administrative Tribunal, hereinafter called Tribunal for the sake of brevity. THE said original application was initially filed by 62 persons. Presently, the writ petition has been filed only by 17 writ petitioners, out of whom one writ petitioner has withdrawn from the array of the writ petitioners. At the relevant time when the application came to be filed, the applicants/ petitioners were working as Under Secretaries in various departments of the Secretariat of Tamil Nadu Government. Prior to 1961 and more particularly upto 17.1.1961 each department of the Secretariat used to be treated as a single unit for the purpose of first appointment promotion etc. This system was brought to an end by G.O.Ms.No.70, dated 17.1.1961, as it was felt that the prevailing system meant injustice for some departments, inasmuch as in the departments which were relatively smaller, even the junior persons got promotions compared to their counter-parts in the other departments which were bigger in size. By that G.O.Ms.No.70, dated 17.1.1961, the whole Secretariat was to be treated as one suit. However, again an exception was cared out by G.O.Ms.No.1152, dated 24.5.1966 whereby the Finance Department and the Law Department were given a special status. THEy were segregated and the Finance and Law Departments were to be treated as one unit respectively in case of few posts only. This position continued till the advent of G.O.Ms.No.1290. By that Government Order, it was provided that one Unit system was to be followed in case of Law and Finance Departments in respect of all the posts therein and not partly as was provided by the Government Order No.1152, dated 24.5.1966. Thus, by G.O.Ms.No.1290, the Finance and Law Departments were totally segregated and were to be treated as separate units respectively.

(2.) THE Government thereafter came out with another order No.1241 dated 7.11.1978. This is a most crucial order insofar as the present controversy is concerned. By the Government Order, the Government amended the service rules and gave these amendments retrospective effect from 13.6.1973. Because of these amended rules, the entire Finance Department and Law Department also were treated as one unit for the purpose of promotion etc. THEn, there appear to be some other amendments to the Tamil Nadu Secretariat Services Rules on 12.4.1988 by G.O.Ms.No.236 which reiterated the practice starting from 17.1.1961.

(3.) AS against this, the learned Government Pleader opposed the writ petition by pointing out that in the first place, the Tribunal has held the application to be belated. The Government Pleader then suggests that even on merits the claim of the petitioners cannot be sustained as the application itself was defective.