Daya Chaudhary, J. - (1.) This judgment of mine shall dispose of two petitions i.e., CWP Nos.1025 and 9498 of 2014 as common question of law and facts are involved. However, for the sake of convenience, the facts are being extracted from CWP No.1025 of 2014.
(2.) The petitioners have approached this Court by way of filing the petition under Articles 226/227 of the Constitution of India for issuance of a writ in the nature of certiorari for quashing of impugned advertisement dated 20.12.2013 (Annexure P-5), whereby the respondent-Corporation has invited fresh applications from the candidates for 1000 posts of Lineman instead of considering the claim of the petitioners, who have already been interviewed for the said post in the year 2011, being illegal, arbitrary and violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.
(3.) Briefly, the facts of the case as made out in the present petition are that the respondent-Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (hereinafter referred to as 'the Corporation') got published an advertisement on 14.01.2011 for inviting online applications from the eligible candidates to fill up 5000 (tentative) posts of Lineman on contract basis on consolidated salary of Rs. 10,000/-. In pursuance of said advertisement, the petitioners being eligible for the post of Lineman, applied before the last date. The respondent-Corporation conducted the counselling/interview of all the eligible candidates including petitioners, which started w.e.f.13.06.2011 onwards and on the basis of qualification and criteria, the final merit list of all the candidates was prepared but the same was not made public because of pendency of the litigation in this Court. During pendency of the proceedings of selection, one association, namely, "Ludhiana Hand Tools Association, Ludhiana" filed a public interest litigation before this Court by way of CWP No.4881 of 2011 alleging therein that the respondent- Corporation was filling up various posts illegally and arbitrarily including the posts of Lineman without any requirement in view of report of Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission. Vide order dated 19.07.2011 passed by this Court, a direction was issued to the respondent-Corporation to look into the matter and submit the report and the recruitment was also stayed till the submission of report. Thereafter, vide order dated 09.11.2011, the respondent-Corporation was granted permission to fill up 1000 posts of Lineman and said writ petition was admitted for regular hearing. The respondent-Corporation issued appointment letters to 1000 candidates whose names figured in first merit list as per their respective category. The petitioners could not be offered appointment as their names were not there in the first 1000 candidates. Thereafter, in pursuance of direction issued by this Court on 19.07.2011, respondent No.3 submitted its report on 19.09.2011 wherein it was stated that the respondent-Corporation should limit the essential requirement of recruitment of the Lineman/SSAs only to replace retiring employees. The aforesaid writ petition came up for final hearing on 27.11.2013 and the same was disposed of in view of the report submitted by respondent No.3-Commission. Respondent-Corporation was also directed to obtain guidelines/instructions beyond September 2011 from the respondent-Commission. Thereafter, respondent-Corporation again issued fresh advertisement dated 20.12.2013 inviting online applications for filling up 1000 posts of Lineman on contract basis on consolidated salary of Rs. 10,000/-. As per clause No.6, the maximum age limit of 39 years (including relaxation of 2 years of Apprentice duration) was prescribed keeping in view the judgment rendered by Hon'ble the Supreme Court in U.P. State Road Transport Corporation v. U.P. Parivahan Nigam Shishukhs Berozgar Sangh and others, AIR 1955 SC 1115 . Again vide notification dated 08.10.2012, the normal upper age limit was increased from 37 years to 38 years for direct appointment till the policy of extension in service by one year remains in force. Some of the candidates became ineligible being beyond age of 39 years and their applications were not accepted while applying online.;