The Supreme Court recently invalidated a Tamil Nadu government order that gave in-service candidates seniority over open market recruits, despite the latter scoring higher marks in the selection exams. The Court emphasized that seniority should be based on performance in the exams rather than unrelated factors such as prior in-service experience.
The Court reiterated that once an appointment to service is made based upon a competitive examination, the seniority has to be maintained on the basis of performance in the examination and not by taking into account the past service alone.
The bench comprising Justices BV Nagarathna and SC Sharma heard the case where the Tamil Nadu Police Subordinate Service Rules, 1955 (1955 Rules). Originally, no promotion quota was fixed for Head Constables for direct recruitment process for Sub Inspectors. Later on, a government order was passed in 1995 reserving 20% of direct recruitment vacancies for in-service Head Constables and granting them seniority. These were not initially incorporated into statutory rules. The aforesaid G.O. further provided that inter-se seniority of the candidates selected under the 20% in-service candidates would be placed above those selected in open competition in that year by way of direct recruitment.
The dispute centered on the retrospective effect given to the government order via an amendment to the 1955 Rules in 2017, which sought to formalize the seniority policy from 1995 onwards.
The Appellants, direct recruits from the open market, challenged the amendment stating that granting seniority to in-service candidates with lower marks violated the principle of equality (Article 14) and merit-based appointments (Article 16).
The key issue was whether the 2017 amendment to Rule 25(a), granting seniority to in-service candidates over direct recruits, violated Articles 14 (equality), 16 (non-discrimination in public employment), and 21 (due process) of the Constitution.
Disagreeing with the High Court’s ruling which preferred in-service experience over direct recruits while granting seniority, the judgment authored by Justice Sharma observed that statutory rules cannot be whittled down by the executive/government order.
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