BHAGWAT PRASAD Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Controversies which hitherto were confined to administrative actions of the State have recently entered into its legislative functions. Even well known and organised services of the State have suffered erosion due to administrative vagaries. Article 309 of the Constitution of India provides for laws to be made to regulate the recuruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services and posts in connection with the affairs of the State, yet its proviso to frame Rules is preferred by the State and in many cases even that is not resorted to and the State administers its services by instruments in the shape of executive instructions. It is hard to believe that the State has not found time to contemplate and the legislature opportunity to enact a law yet it has not been done is a fact.

(2.) Subordinate Education Service which existed in two separate cadres of the lower division and the upper division has ceased to have the lower division, and the upper division which had a certain characteristic of its own once found a group of teachers selected pursuant to a scheme known as Higher Secondary Scheme remained stark and agitated whether they formed part of the upper division of the service or not until settled by a pronouncement of this Court. One could think of the controversies coming to an end, but the State's action in framing Rules deviding service and the cadre of the upper division into one of the teachers appointed directly to the service and other who are described as those belonging to the general cadre, the matter has come before this Court once again. This Court has to reiterate the facts once more. It has to enter into the questions alredy settled again and decided one way or the other.

(3.) Facts which stood concluded with the findings recorded by a Bench of this Court in C. W. J. C. No. 2956/75 are that the secondary education in the State of Bihar which was controlled by the examinations conducted by the Patna University until 1951 was transferred to the control of the secondary school examination Board, and a Higher Secondary Scheme was introduced by the order of the Government of the State dated 9-6-1958 converting a number of existing government schools into Multipurpose Higher Secondary Schools and extending teaching in other subjects besides the existing subjects of study. According to the petitioners for the purpose of Multipurpose Higher Secondary Schools a large number of additional posts were created and while a number of teachers who were in the lower division of the service were promoted to filling these new posts, the Government of the State also made direct recruitments to the service. The new appointees as also those promoted from the lower division were absorbed in the upper division of the service. The State Government, however, maintained a sort of separate existing cadre of the Multipurpose Higher Secondary School teachers until the Higher Secondary Scheme was withdrawn by the State Government in the year 1971. That withdrawal caused a decision to absorb the teachers appointed under the Higher Secondary Scheme into the upper division of the Subordinate Education Service. When the Government formulated its principles and guidelines of determining inter se seniority of such teachers who were in the Multipurpose Higher Secondary Schools and the teachers who were in the general cadre, it circulated a gradation list inviting objections. The State Government, however, maintained that the Higher Secondary teachers were in no way different from those who were in the Subordinate Education Service upper division. Alleging that they were adversely affected and that their fundamental rights were violated some of the members of the Subordinate Education Service general cadre moved this Court in C. W. J. C. No. 2956/5.