UMA SHANKAR PANDEY Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD learned counsel for the petitioners and learned counsel appearing for the State.

(2.) AFTER advertisement a panel has been prepared of those who had been previously working on daily wage basis. In the writ petition, the petitioners have complained that while no appointment is being given from the said panel, the District Magistrate has given appointment on 27th June, 2005 to 5 persons, who are not in that panel. The respondents have filed a counter affidavit and therein have stated that there was ban for giving appointment. The ban has been recently withdrawn. Promptly thereafter on the basis of the present roster policy, a new list has been prepared, which has been sent to the Divisional Commissioner for his approval and after such approval is obtained, the financial approval thereto is required to be obtained and as soon as the same is obtained, appointments will be given.

(3.) THE petitioners contend that there is no policy of the State Government to give any such appointment. It is doubtful whether Government can at all frame a policy to give a Government appointment to a person whose relative has died while fighting for obtaining a contract for lifting sand. From the averments in the affidavit filed by the respondents, it appears to me that at the sand loading site of Kiul river there could not be any hutment nor there could be a town or a settlement of ordinary citizens and accordingly question of mass killing of ordinary citizens at that site may not arise. In the event, labourers engaged by a contractor to lift sand had been killed en mass by terrorists, of course, same may be said to be mass killing, but if those labourers had been engaged to grab the sand loading site and in the melee some of them had died, it cannot be said to be mass killing. This aspect of the matter has not been dealt with at all in the counter affidavit.