RAJINDER SINGH AND ANOTHER Vs. STATE AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Order of respondent No.2 issued vide No.25-DRD of 2018 dated 15.01.2018 whereby the respondents 3 to 12 along with few others have been deployed to look after the work of Incharge Inspector Panchayat-II in different blocks is subject matter of challenge in this writ petition filed by the petitioners. The petitioners also claim a direction to the official respondents to promote them to the post of Panchayat Inspector Grade-II with effect from the date the private respondents have been so deployed/promoted. The petitioners also seek prohibition against the respondents to promote the respondents 3 to 12 (hereinafter referred to as private respondents) as Panchayat Inspector Grade-II on substantive basis.

(2.) The facts leading to the filing of this writ petition lie in a very narrow compass. The petitioners claim to have been appointed as Multi- Purpose Workers (MPWs) in the Rural Development Department on 01.04.1997 whereas private respondents were appointed as Village Level Workers (VLWs) in the Rural Development Department in the years 1998 and 2000, i.e., much after the appointment of the petitioners as MPWs. The grievance projected by the petitioners in this writ petition precisely is that though both VLWs and MPWs are clubbed together and put in the same category, which serves as feeding source for promotion to the post of Panchayat Inspector Grade-II and that they are seniors to the private respondents, the official respondents by virtue of Order impugned have entrusted the higher responsibility of Panchayat Inspector Grade-II to the private respondents, thus, ignoring the superior claim of the petitioners. Reference in this regard is specifically invited to Schedule 1-A of the Jammu and Kashmir Rural Development (Subordinate) Service Recruitment Rules, 2007 (the Rules of 2007 for short). It is, thus, submitted that both VLWs and MPWs are at par and therefore, eligible to be promoted to the post of Panchayat Inspector Grade-II. Dwelling upon the sequence events which led to the encadrement of the MPWs on the Rural Development (Subordinate) Service constituted by the Rules of 2007, it is pleaded that vide Govt. OrderNo.309-Agri of 1989 dated 27.04.1989, sanction was accorded to the creation of agency of Multipurpose Worker for each Panchayat on contractual basis. Subsequently, vide Govt. Order No. 166-Agri of 1997 dated 18.03.1997; the Multi-Purpose Workers appointed on contractual basis were regularized w.e.f. 01.04.1997. The petitioners further claim that pursuant to the aforesaid Govt. Order, their services too were regularized w.e.f. 01.04.1997, which is the date of their appointment as MPWs indicated in the tentative seniority list of MPWs of Jammu Division as it stood on 30.04.2010 appended with the writ petition as Annexure-A. The private respondents, it is pleaded, were recruited as VLWs after the appointment of the petitioners, some in the year 1998 and some thereafter. Reliance in this regard has been placed on the seniority list of VLWs of Jammu Division as it stood on 01.05.2010 appended with the writ petition as Annexure-B.

(3.) On the basis of the aforesaid factual background, the petitioners claim that they are seniors to the private respondents and, therefore, have a prior right to be deployed/promoted as Panchayat Inspector Grade-II, but the official respondents have ignored the whole category of MPWs and have chosen only VLWs including the private respondents, who are juniors to the petitioners for their deployment as Incharge Inspector Panchayat GradeII which, as pleaded, in the writ petition, is not in consonance with law. This, in nutshell, is the grievance projected by the petitioners in this writ petition.