MUNNALAL SAKET Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India has been filed by the petitioners contending that the claim made by the petitioners for grant of minimum pay scale of the post has been denied to them, whereas, similarly situated persons have been granted the said benefit, though they were appointed subsequent to the appointment of the petitioner. In respect of the claim made by the petitioners, since the directions were given by this Court, it was necessary on the part of the respondents to consider the case of the petitioner in appropriate manner and since the benefit of regular pay scale was made available to some of the persons like petitioners, the very same benefit should have been granted to the petitioners. However, such claims of the petitioners have been denied, therefore, this writ petition is required to be filed. On the basis of these allegations, the petitioners have claimed the following reliefs :

(2.) UPON service of the notices of the writ petition, the respondents No. 1 to 4 have filed a return and have contended that the petitioners were not those who were appointed irregularly against the sanctioned post, therefore, in terms of the Scheme made by the State Government, pursuance to the directions issued by the Apex Court in the case of Secretary, State of Karnataka and others Vs. Uma Devi (3) and others [(2006) 4 SCC 1], the petitioners were not entitled to grant of the reliefs as claimed in the petition. It is contended that the entire claim made by the petitioners in the writ petition is misconceived. It is contended that since the petitioners were to be granted only the special allowance for working on the post as daily wagers, such an order was issued in their respect. However, no further reliefs are required to be granted to the petitioners.

(3.) IN fact, the special drive of recruitment was initiated by the State Government for filling in the vacancies which remained unfilled on account of non availability of the suitable candidates, only in reserved category of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Backward Classes. These vacancies were to be carried forward and, ultimately, when lot of vacancies were available in the backlog, the State Government started a special drive of recruitment of reserved category candidates. The names were invited from the employment exchange, the applications were also invited from the open market, all the candidates were required to appear before a Selection Committee, duly constituted under the Chairmanship of the Collector of the district or his nominee, on selection the lists were made available by the Selection Committee and the persons out of the select list were recommended to be appointed in different departments where the vacancies were available in the particular category, such as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Backward Classes. In fact, all such appointments were required to be made against a regular post and on a regular pay scale and not as a contingency appointment or even a daily wages appointment. These facts have not been disputed by the respondents nor the justification of issuing the order dated 3.3.1997 has been given by them in their return. Though these facts have not been properly highlighted by the petitioners, but they have tried to show that the special drive recruitment process was started only for the reserved category candidates as was done in the year 2010, as well. Even if, the petitioners after selection were appointed on daily wages against the clear vacancies, whenever there was a need to fill in the regular post, they should have been regularised, treating their appointment as daily wages, as probation period on satisfactory services, as they have already undergone the process of selection once which was not required to be repeated for those persons.