K. Kannan, J. - (1.) THE writ petition is at the instance of 47 persons working in various schools in the District of Faridabad seeking for promotion as Head Teachers and challenge the decision of the State Authorities in the Education Department in preferring persons from General category to such promotion. The Petitioners belonged to Scheduled Caste category. The Petitioners were relying on allocation of seats to each category set through the communication of the Commissioner and Secretary, Government of Haryana, Education Department to the Director of Public Instructions. The policy statement refers through Para 4 as follows: 4. ALLOCATION OF SEATS OF DIFFERENT CATEGORIES. Posts of Head -Teachers should be divided in the ratio of 60:40 amongst men and women. Between State Cadre and Provincialized Cadre there shall be ratio of 50:50. In the Schools/Districts where provincialized cadre teachers are not available, all promotions should be given to the teachers belonging to same category and in those district where 50% posts are filled from the Provincialized cadre and all those teachers become Head Teachers even then the seats remain unfilled then the seats should be filled from State -Cadre of the same category. As and when teachers belonging to Provincialized cadre are promoted, their quota should be changed/merged in the State Cadre.
(2.) THE contention of the Petitioners were that they belong to the State cadre and when the Provincialized cadre was exhausted, the Scheduled Caste category from the State cadre must have been filled up before the General category had been filled. It appears that during the pendency of proceedings, all the Petitioners were also given promotion as Head Teachers in the year 1994. The Petitioners, however, would plead that their entitlement must rank from the year 1990 itself and they should have, therefore, monetary benefit of a higher scale appertaining to promotion post. The Petitioners' claims are resisted by the State by pointing out that different categories extracted above relate only to the category of men and women in the ratio of 60:40 and it has nothing to with the Reserved category for persons belonging to Scheduled Caste category. In my view, the above passage cannot be read in isolation and it must be read in context of several communications and circulars that were extant and they were governing the rights of parties. The policy of reservation for Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes which was passed by the Chief Secretary to all the Heads of Departments in the State of Haryana provides that the persons belonging to Scheduled Caste category will have 20% reservation by promotion in Class III and Class IV posts on the basis of seniority -cum - merit. The references to 'quota' and categories must be seen as referring to both the categories of men and women as well as reservation of such promotion posts within the scheme as formalized through the communication of the Chief Secretary. While I will accord that in the manner of filling up the vacancies from the State cadre, it ought to have been done in the ratio of 60:40 amongst the men and women, there is still no scope for rejecting the claims within the permissible limits for the persons belonging to Scheduled Caste category. If 'General' candidates had been preferred even when there was sufficient vacancies in the State cadre, it was clearly to the detriment of the Petitioners who all belonged to Scheduled Caste category.
(3.) THE Petitioners are entitled to be considered as promoted from the date when the candidates from the General category had been filled up from amongst the State cadre. The Petitioners had not been guilty of any latches and the case was being filed in the year 1990 itself. The scales applicable to the promotional posts must be calculated and paid to the Petitioners between the period when the persons belonging to General category from the State cadre had been promoted as Head Teachers till date when they actually assumed office. The entire exercise shall be undertaken by the State immediately within a period of 8 weeks from the date of receipt of the copy of the order and the monetary benefits accruing shall become payable to the Petitioners.;