IMPORTANT POINT
Although vacancies can be advertised taking all vacancies from all the colleges together; the select list must be issued by applying reservation and roster subject-wise and college-wise.

ORDER

Uday Umesh Lalit, J.

1. Permission to file special leave petition granted in all matters. Heard Mr. Shekhar Naphade, Mr. Salman Khurshid and Mr. S.G. Hasnain, learned Senior Advocates in support of the petitions.

2. These petitions are directed against the order dated 10.10.2018 passed by a bench of five learned Judges of the High Court of Allahabad in Writ Petition No.51212 of 2010 and other connected matters turning down the reference made to a larger bench and directing that the concerned matters be placed before an appropriate court for disposal of writ petitions and other connected matters.

3. Two learned Judges of the High Court, finding themselves unable to agree with the view taken by another bench of two learned Judges in Dr. Vishwajeet Singh and others. v. State of U.P. and others., 2009 (4) ADJ 373 as well as the view expressed by a Full Bench of the High Court in Heera Lal v. State of U.P., 2010 (6) ADJ 1 (FB) formulated following questions to be considered and decided by a bench of more than three Judges.

“1. Whether the rules of reservations under the U.P. Act No.4 of 1994 are applicable to appointment on the post of lecturers, by direct recruitment, in the aided postgraduate and undergraduate colleges in the State of UP, affiliated to the State Universities by clubbing all the vacancies as provided under Section 12(3) of the UP Higher Education Service Commission Act, 1980 subject-wise; or the vacancies have to be worked out for applicability of rules of reservation college-wise and subject-wise?

2. Whether there has to be plurality posts in the cadre, for applying the rules of reservation, which means more than one; or there has to be at least five posts in the cadre for applying the rules of reservations?

3. Whether the vacancies arising in any recruitment year under Rule 3(2) of UP Act No.4 of 1994 can be filled up separately even if they have not been advertised earlier, in that recruitment year or in the subsequent recruitment year, or such reserved vacancies have to be advertised at least once to be carried over for the recruitment in the same year or in the subsequent year?

4. What is the meaning of the words ‘unfilled vacancies’ in Section 3(2) of UP Act No.4 of 1994?

5. Whether Dr. Vishwajeet Singh’s case (supra) and the Full Bench decision in Heera Lal’s case (supra) have been correctly decided?”

4. In Dr. Vishwajeet Singh’s case (supra), challenge was raised to an advertisement issued by the U.P. Higher Education Service Commission initiating selection process for filling-up 838 posts of lecturers in different subjects in various graduate/post-graduate colleges in the State of Uttar Pradesh. The selection process was described to be a special recruitment drive to clear carry forward and backlog vacancies of the reserved categories and all the posts were said to be reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes. Apart from the other questions raised in the matter, the clubbing of vacancies by the Director of Education for the purpose of sending requisition to the Commission was specifically in issue. The submission as recorded in Dr. Vishwajeet Singh’s case (supra) was as under:

“… … …The clubbing of the vacancies by the Director of Education for the purpose of sending requisition to the Commission for advertisement may be permissible for the purpose of recruitment but the entire vacancies of Lecturers in different post-graduate colleges/graduate colleges cannot be treated to be one unit for applying the rules of reservation. The vacancies have to be advertised subject-wise, college-wise and the roster has to be applied subject-wise and college-wise. Neither the vacancies of Lecturer in different colleges can be clubbed nor the vacancies of Lecturers even in one college can be clubbed together for applying the roster. There is no common cadre of Lecturers in different colleges. The posts are sanctioned by the Director of Higher Education subject-wise, separately for each