HANMANT MAHAJAN THAKUR Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD Shri S. B. Talekar and Shri V. G. Sakolkar, Advocates for the petitioners; Smt. A. S. Rasal, S. K. Kadam, Shri S. S. Shinde and Shri P. B. Varale, Assistant Government Pleaders for the respondent-State and Regional Subordinate Services Selection Board; and Shri A. S. Golegaonkar and Shri E. P. Sawant, Advocates for the Zilla Parishads.

(2.) THESE are the petitions by Multipurpose Health Workers who have undergone training for 12 months period and thereafter were appointed by the Zilla Parishads as Multipurpose Health Workers for a period of 2 years. Since the petitioners' services are either terminated or likely to be terminated, they have approached this Court for quashing the termination order and for challenging the action of the Zilla Parishads.

(3.) HEALTH Worker is a District Technical Service (Class III) (Health) Grade-III in the Zilla Parishad and the Maharashtra Zilla Parishad District Services (Recruitment) Rules, 1967 prescribe that for the appointment in this cadre by nomination, the candidate should not have been more than 28 years of age, should have passed secondary school certificate examination with physics, chemistry or biology or general science as the subjects and must have successfully undergone 12 months training course for Multipurpose Health Workers. Therefore, 12 months basic training course for the Multipurpose Health Workers was one of the pre-requisite training for any candidate to be appointed as Health Worker. We have used the nomenclature 'health Worker' since the parties have admitted before us that there is no separate post of Multipurpose Health Worker and the petitioners and other similarly situated persons appointed as Multipurpose Health Workers are covered by Item No. 3 as titled as 'health Worker' in Appendix VI to the Maharashtra Zilla Parishad District Services (Recruitment) Rules, 1967. Some of the petitioners also claim that these posts have now been excluded from the purview of the Subordinate Services Selection Board so far as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates are concerned. We have gone through the relevant Government circulars and we find that since there was some backlog to be filled in these categories, the Government felt that if any post is to be filled in Class III or Class IV of the Zilla Parishad from the above referred reserved categories to fill in the backlog by a special drive, then for the purpose of such recruitment under that drive, the posts have been excluded from the purview of the Subordinate Selection Board. It is not that these posts are totally excluded merely because some candidate is Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. The Government circular clarifies that if the reserved post is to be filled in as per the 100 Point or 200 Point Roster as the case may be, then they will have to be recruited by normal procedure and are not excluded from the purview of the Services Selection Board. It is only when a special drive is taken to fill in the backlog of these categories, then only the recruitment through the Selection Board is not required.