Madras HC Orders Lab Assistant Job For Orphan Candidate Without Displacing 7 Hires, Rejecting Automatic Priority Ladder Between Groups

The petitioner, an MBC candidate claiming orphan priority (Group III), challenged a provisional selection list dated 14 April 2017 for Laboratory Assistant posts.

He had secured 120 marks; the private respondents, also MBC candidates, had secured between 64 and 76 marks and were selected under Group II priority as an Ex-Serviceman and Destitute Widows.

The selection filled 108 vacancies under the 200-point roster.

The petitioner sought to quash their selections and obtain appointment; at the hearing, the department stated that 28 Laboratory Assistant vacancies remained in Tirunelveli district.

G.O.Ms. No. 188, Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department, dated 28 December 1976, identified categories of priority candidates across Groups I to IV, but, as the Court read it, did not prescribe a waterfall mechanism requiring exhaustion of one group before consideration of the next.

G.O.Ms. No. 122, Human Resources Management Department, dated 2 November 2021, later introduced changes to the consideration of priority groups, but came into effect after the selection at issue.

The Court held that, absent a prescribed group-exhaustion rule, candidates in later priority groups could not be denied consideration merely because candidates in an earlier group were available.

The Court found that the petitioner and private respondents belonged to the same community and claimed priority status, but under different groups: the petitioner was in Group III, while the private respondents were in Group II.

Although the department had selected the Group II candidates on the basis that Group III candidates need not be considered while Group II candidates were available, the Court found no such requirement in the applicable 1976 Government Order.

It therefore held the selection method legally defective, while declining to unsettle the private respondents’ long-standing appointments.

In light of the stated vacancies, the Court considered appointment of the petitioner an appropriate remedy.

It directed respondents 1 to 3 to appoint the petitioner as a Laboratory Assistant against an available vacancy in Tirunelveli district within eight weeks of receiving the order.

The private respondents’ appointments were not to be disturbed, and the petitioner’s service was to count from the date he joined.