Judgment

CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.:- Special leave granted.

The Bihar State Harijan Kalyan Parishad whose writ petition against the Steel Authority of India Ltd., the Union of India and others, was dismissed in limine is the appellant before us in this appeal. We are afraid, notwithstanding the summary dismissal of the writ petition by the High Court, this appeal has to be allowed. The appellant is rightly aggrieved with letter No. 18(12)/81-SAIL II/Coord dated April 8,1982 from the Ministry of Steel and Mines addressed to the Chairman of the Steel Authority of India Limited and letter No. PER/IR/7949(pt) dated August 19, 1982 from the Steel Authority of India Limited to the Chief Personnel Manager, Bokaro Steel Plant, Bokaro. The effect of the two letters, Which we will extract in full later at an appropriate stage, is to deny to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes the benefit of reservation in the matter of promotion to selection posts within Group A. The Bokaro Steel Plant, we may mention here, is a unit of the Steel Authority of India Limited which in turn is a publiclimited Company entirely owned, controlled and supervised by the Central Government. It is not disputed that the S