Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.:- This case illustrates the thesis that unlimited jurisdiction under Article 136 self-defeatingly attracts unlimited litigation which, in turn, clogs up and slows down to zero-speed the flow of ultimate decisions, what with the lengthy orality and legal nicety of lawyers advocacy. This bunch of appeals, affecting the fortunes of a large number of engineers, is evidence of the flood of service litigation which the courts, paralyses public offices and demands of our pyramidal Justice System basic changes, jurisdictional and processual. The perennial problems of Service Justice, which currently crowd the dockets of the higher courts, save in cases of basic breaches of the fundamental law, may well be made over to expert bodies, high powered and final but presided over by top judicial personnel. Service Jurisprudence is a specialised branch best administered by special tribunals, not routinely under Article 226. We do not pontificate but share thoughts.

2. We are concerned mainly with the competitive claims to seniority mainly as between three groups of engineers belonging to the U. P. Service of Engineers (Irrigation Branch) - graduate engineers directly recruited by the Public Service Commission by competitive examination, graduate engineers once appointed in numbers but later absorbed after consultation with the Public Service Commission and diploma-holders later promoted as Assistant Engineers. Brushing aside the hoary history of the Service when the British were hardly concerned with the development of Indias natural resources, we may start the story with the U. P. Public Works Department of which the Irrigation Wing was a part, the other branch being Buildings and Roads. Later on, separate departments for Buildings and Roads and for Irrigation were formed in 1946 as a developmental imperative of the State. Recruitment to the Service - we are here concerned only with the Irrigation Department - was governed by vintage Rules framed under Section 96-B of the Government of India Act, 1919, which had a confused course, and that factor - i. e. lack of comprehensive structural engineering of the Engineering Service Rules - is largely responsible for frequent group clashes among the broad brotherhood of engineers whose whole-hearted service, now distracted by litigation, is needed for national But national dedication, so vital to poverty eradication, is subject to one rider in our society viz. charity begins at home. And so, for their own justice-oriented survival, the groups are fighting in courts while the demands of developmental justice to the people need their presence in the country side.

3. There were, to begin with, Class I and Class II officers, but in 1948, the two were fused into one, viz. the U. P. Service of Engineers (Junior and Senior Scales). The Service came into being but fresh rules of recruitment were not made. Thus, a Service was born but then the rules regulating recruitment conditions and classifications were unborn. So, Government relied on the old Rules of 1936 for these purposes with some G. O. or other issued under pressure of exigencies. The past projected into the present with ad hoc changes - a process which, not being scientific nor systematic, was bound to produce injustice, as it has in this Service. The dialectics of Justice to Public Services lead to conflicts between the thesis (the old conditions) and anti-thesis (the new expectations) until a synthesis (realist equilibrium without discrimination) is reached by enlightened governmental policy-making. Had Rules for the Service, in tune with the Constitution and the updated facts of life been made by Government instead of flirting with the past and improving for the present things would have been different. Court litigation is not designed for that end, but judges cannot but make-do with what fossil Service Rules with engrafted mutations survive. To dig into the past is our lot in this case. We do not blame Government for fai