SUSHIL CHAND SRIVASTAVA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The writ Petitioners of all the three writ petitions had taken the 24th Judicial Service Examination conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as "the Commission") pursuant to an advertisement in the year 1990. They have prayed for quashing the notification No. 4691 dated 18.8.2001 issued by the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department of State of Bihar contained in Annexure-5, whereby 70 candidates were appointed to the post of Munsif in the general/open category on the basis of their position in the merit list. The challenge is confined to the appointment of private Respondents 6 to 11, who are at serial nos. 16, 20, 48, 65, 66 and 67 of Annexure-5 to C.W.J.C. No. 16634 of 2004. Since the cases of all the Petitioners in these three writ petitions are said to be similar, for the sake of convenience, the facts have been taken, wherever necessary from the records of aforesaid writ petition which was argued as the main case. The Petitioners have made a further prayer for direction to the Respondents to appoint them on the post of Munsif from out of merit list of general category candidates.

(2.) Fortunately, the facts are not in dispute. The initial vacancies advertised by the Commission were seven but with a stipulation that numbers might be increased. Subsequently, the number of vacancies was increased to 245 through another advertisement dated 7.10.1991. The State of Bihar sought to introduce reservation for some backward categories, beyond the reservation provided under the Bihar Civil Services (Judicial Branch) (Recruitment ) Rules,1955 (hereinafter referred to as the "Rules") which provide reservation only for S.C. and ST. category candidates, through an Ordinance of 1991, which was later on converted into Act 3 of 1992. By a letter bearing No. 13069 dated 1st October, 1991 the State Government took the stand that the provisions in the said Act for reservation to various categories such as Most Backward class, Extremely Backward class and women is to be applied to the recruitment through 24th Judicial Competitive Examination. Accordingly, in the advertisement dated 7.10.1991 the vacancies were increased to 245, and were categorized as;-General-123, S.C.-34, S.T.-25, M.B.C-29, B.C.-20, E.B.C-7 and Women-7.

(3.) The provisions in the Ordinance were subsequently incorporated in the Act providing for reservation in the Judicial Service also and these were challenged through C.W.J.C. No. 7619 of 1991. That writ petition was allowed on 6.8.1993 vide Judgment (Deepak Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar,1993 PLJR 2) which was challenged by the State of Bihar through SLP (Civil) No. 16476 of 1993 before the Supreme Court. The Court allowed the selection process to go on but stayed appointments vide interim order dated 13.5.94 which was partly modified on 16.5.95. The matter remained pending there for sometime but ultimately the said S.L.P. leading to Civil Appeal No. 9072/1996 (State of Bihar v. Bal Mukund Sah) was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 14.3.2000.