- (1.) In these six Civil Writ Petition Nos. 3659, 3138 and 5799 of 1986 and 660, 755 and 5141 of 1987, filed under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, prayer for the issuance of a writ of mandamus has been made by a number of Engineering Graduates for commanding the Haryana Public Service Commission to recommend their names to the State of Haryana for appointment against the forty-four posts lying vacant in the Haryana Service of Engineers Class-I, P.W.D. (Irrigation Branch), required to be filled in by direct recruitment on the basis of open competition by the Haryana Public Service Commission in accordance with the Haryana Service of Engineers Class-I, P.W.D. Irrigation Branch, Rules, 1964. Since common questions of fact and law are involved in all these writ petitions, all of them are being decided by one and the same judgment, for which facts have been taken from C.W.P. No. 3659 of 1986 (Baldev Setia and others v. State of Haryana, etc.).
(2.) Recruitment to the Haryana Service of Engineers Class-I, P.W.D. Irrigation Branch, is governed by the statutory Rules framed in 1964 in the joint Punjab, as amended by the State of Haryana from time to time under Article 309 of the Constitution of India. According to these Rules, recruitment to Class-I Service is by two sources, that is, by promotion from Class-II, Service is also by direct appointment; provision for transfer of a Class I officer already serving in the Government of India or the State Government has also been made in the Rules. After 1974, according to Rule 5(2) of the aforesaid Service Rules, recruitment to the Service has been regulated so as to provide that number of Class I posts filled by promotion from Class II Service shall not exceed 50 per cent of the total number of posts constituting the cadre strength of Class I Service. According to Rule 7, the posts falling in the quota of direct appointments have to be filled up on the basis of selection by the Public Service Commission after holding a competitive examination as prescribed by the State Government. Sub-rule (2) of Rule 7 reads as under :- "The selection of candidates, including those belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes or Backward Classes, shall be made by the Commission, after holding a competitive examination, the syllabus for which shall be such as may be prescribed by Government from time to time. The Commission shall recommend the required number of candidates after arranging their names in the order of merit and indicating which out of them belong to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled tribes or Backward Classes : provided that a candidate shall not be considered qualified for appointment unless he obtains not less than forty per cent marks in each subject and not less than 50 per cent marks in the aggregate and no candidate who does not obtain the qualifying marks shall be called for interview by the Commission."
(3.) In order to fill up the vacancies falling in the quota for direct appointment, in the year 1979, a requisition was sent by the State Government to the Haryana Public Service Commission, on the receipt whereof the Commission advertised twenty-two posts of the Haryana Service of Engineers Class-I. On the basis of the selection made by the Commission, names of eight candidates were recommended by it to the State Government for appointment. In the year 1983, the State Government again sent a requisition to the Commissions for advertising twenty-three posts for making recruitment to the Haryana Service of Engineers Class-I. The Commission accordingly advertised the vacancies. Again in 1985, advertisement was issued wherein a number of posts in the Public Health Branch as well as in the Buildings & Roads Branch were also added to the vacancies in the P.W.D. (Irrigation Branch), for which a combined competition was to be held by the Haryana Public Service Commission. The advertisement, Annexure P-6, reads as under :- 'HARYANA PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION, CHANDIGARH, HARYANA SERVICE OF ENGINEERS EXAMINATIONS, 1985 (COMPETITIVE) Instructions and Information for Candidates - 1. A combined competitive examination for recruitment to the post of Assistant Executive Engineer (C) in the P.W.D. will be held by the Haryana Public Service Commission in August/September 1985, in accordance with the rules contained in H.S.E. Class I Rules of Haryana P.W.D. Irrigation, B&R, Public Health Branches as amended from time to time : x x x x x". Though in the advertisement it was specifically provided that for the Public Health Branch, the number of posts was 15 and for the Buildings & Roads Branch, the posts were 8, but there was no such indication made in the case of Irrigation Branch. All that was provided against category (iii), that is, relating to Haryana Service of Engineers Class I (Junior Scale), was that the posts in the P.W.D. Irrigation Branch were also likely to be filed from suitable candidates from this very advertisement after the receipt of demand from the Government.;