Judgment

PALEKAR, J. :- These are appeals by certificate from an Order of the Punjab High Court (Circuit Bench at Delhi) dated 16-9-1964 in Civil Writ Nos. 244D to 250D of 1963 dismissing the petitions. The appellants prayed for a writ of mandamus directing the respondents, the Union of India and others, to recognize and declare the appointments of the appellants Income-tax Officers as having been made in class I grade II, instead of class II grade III; to frame a list of seniority accordingly and to grant the appellants all consequential reliefs following therein. Seven separate petitions were filed but the petitions were based on practically the same facts. It is sufficient, therefore, to refer to the facts in the first Civil Appeal No. 2395 of 1968 because a decision in that appeal will govern the other appeals.

2. The appellant Krishnaswamy was offered a post of an Income-tax Officer, class II, grade III in 1950 and on his acceptance of the same, he was appointed to the post in 1950. It appears that in 1945, Government had framed rules entitled the "Income-tax Officers (Class I, grade II) Service Recruitment Rules" for regulating recruitment to the said service 80% of the vacancies in that cadre were to be filled by direct recruitment on the result of a competitive examination held by the Federal Public Service Commission and the remaining 20% of the posts were liable to be filled by promotion of Income-tax Officers from class II grade III. It must be stated here that, at that time, on the reorganisation of the service, there were two classes of Income-tax Officers - class I and class II. Class I officers were divided into two grades of grade I and grade II and Class II officers were called grade III officers. The rules referred to above were only concerned with Class I, grade II.

3. The appellant Krishnaswamy had appeared in the competitive examination held by the Federal Public Service Commission in 1948 and if a vacancy was available and he was found eligible he would have been appointed directly to class I, grade II post. But in the competitive examination his rank was 122 and since the Government recruited only 33 Income-tax Officers directly that year he could not be accommodated. The Central Government, however, offered him a post in class II, grade III which as we have already stated, he accepted and he joined that post in 1950. In 1951 he made a representation to the Government that he ought to have been appointed in class I, grade II and not in class II grade III. In the reply dated 15-10-1951 he was informed by the Government as follows :

".............appointments to Class I service are offered strictly in order of merit upto the number of vacancies available to candidates declared eligible for such appointments by the Union Public Service Commission on the results of the annual combined competitive examinations. As the number of vacancies to be filled on the results of the 1948 examination was less than the number declared eligible on the results of that examination, candidates who though eligible ranked below the number required were not offered appointments to class I Services. In the circumstances, the Government of India are of opinion that there is no ground for legitimate grievance at all."

So far as the respondents are concerned the matter was closed in 1951.

4. Some 10 years later a direct recruit named Jaisinghani challenged the correctness of the seniority list of Income-tax Officers prepared by the Government. His complaint was that more vacancies were given to the promotees than what they were entitled to under the rules and that by an artificial rule which gave the promotees weightage in seniority his own seniority in the seniority list had been considerably affected. He filed his Writ Petition before the Circuit Bench at Delhi in 1962 and in the course of that litigation the appellant Krishnaswamy learnt that the vacancies in class I, grade II for the year 1950 had been wrongly calculated by the Govern