- (1.) THESE appeals by special leave are directed against the judgment and order dated 30-11-1999 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in LPA No, 951 of 1991 whereby the Division Bench of the High Court disposed of a batch of letters patent appeals and writ petitions by a common order. We are not going into the facts because we are disposing of these appeals on a limited question.
(2.) THE controversy involved in these appeals is whether the direct recruits should be made senior against the promotion of the Source IV Officers as contemplated in Rule 6 of the Punjab Service of Engineers, Class II, PWD (Buildings and Roads Branch) Rules, 1965. As per Rule 6, there are various sources of recruitment and we are concerned with the recruitment of Source IV to Class I. A dispute arose that all these persons belonging to Source IV were given years of allotment after the 1979 DPC from 1976 onwards. During that time also people from direct recruitment were available. Initially a seniority list was issued on 28-5-1980 wherein persons recruited from Source IV were shown senior to direct recruits. This was challenged by filing a writ petition and during the pendency of the writ petition the seniority list of 28-5-1980 was revised on 9-10-1986 and the persons from the direct recruits were shown above the persons from Source IV. This was also made a subject-matter of challenge in the writ petition. The direct recruits then approached the Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the State also filed the LPA against the order passed by the learned Single Judge. The Division Bench, after considering the matter, set aside the order of the learned Single Judge and dismissed the writ petition and maintained that the persons coming from Source IV shall be placed below from the persons coming from direct recruits. Aggrieved by the order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court the present special leave petition was filed before this Court by private persons recruited under Source IV. We have narrowed down the controversy without giving detailed facts of the matter for the reasons which will follow subsequently.
(3.) OUR attention has been invited to a subsequent amendment of the Rules by the Punjab Service of Engineers, Class II, PWD (Buildings and Roads Branch) First Amendment Rules, 1986 dated 2-6-1986 whereby Rule 9 was amended and a proviso was added to sub-rule (11) which reads as under: "Provided that in case the list is not revised in any particular year the vacancies, if any, still existing as on the last day of the previous year, for want of any candidate on the list who could be appointed, and the vacancies becoming available during such year shall be reserved for candidates who were eligible as on the first day of January of such year and who are placed on the list on its next revision and the candidates of the respective category to whom the vacancy belongs in accordance with these rules shall be regularly appointed with retrospective effect from the date of the respective vacancy," ;