IMPORTANT POINT
Promotion – In absence of any statutory provision or rule made thereunder or under proviso appended to Article 309 of Constitution of India, once an incumbent is appointed to post according to rules, their seniority has to be counted from date of appointment.

JUDGMENT

Sanjay Kishan Kaul, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. The Appellants herein joined the service as Junior Engineers in the Electricity Department of the Government of Puducherry, having already acquired an Engineering Degree prior to the appointment to the post of Junior Engineer. On the other hand, the private Respondents joined the service as Junior Engineers with a Diploma and, in the course of service, obtained an Engineering Degree.

Factual Background:

3. As per the Government of Pondicherry, Electricity Department, Group B (Technical) Assistant Engineer (Electrical) Recruitment Rules, 1979 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Rules’) for the post of Junior Engineer, 50% of the vacancies are to be filled by promotion, and the remaining 50% are to be filled by direct recruitment. The next avenue of promotion is to the post of Assistant Engineer (Electrical).

4. Under the said Rules, 80% of the vacancies for the post of Assistant Engineer are to be filled up by ‘promotion’ and 20% by ‘direct recruitment’. The promotion is made among Junior Engineers with three years of regular service for those with a Degree in electrical engineering and seven years of regular service for those with only a Diploma in electrical engineering. A subsequent amendment dated 07.10.1982 was made to Rule 4 read with Paragraph 11 of the Recruitment Rules on the subject of ‘promotion’. Thereafter, the amended Rules earmarked 50% for those Junior Engineers who possess Degree in Engineering with regular service of 3 years. The other 50% was earmarked for those Junior Engineers who possess Diploma with regular service of 7 years.

5. Significance of the aforesaid is that in order to earn their promotion to the post of Assistant Engineer, a Junior Engineer, possessing an Engineering Degree, has to have fewer years of service while in the case of a Diploma holder, the requisite period for service, to be eligible for promotion, was more. We may notice that while working as a Junior Engineer, there is no difference between a Degree holder and a Diploma holder. The moot point, thus, which arises, is whether, for a Diploma holder, who acquires a degree during the course of employment, the period of service as a Junior Engineer prior to acquiring the degree is to be excluded for computing the eligible period of service for promotion to the post of an Assistant Engineer.

6. The Puducherry administration construed the Rules to mean that as long as the Diploma holder acquires a degree, the period spent in service as a Junior Engineer, before the acquisition of an engineering degree, would be counted. The Appellants, thus, approached the Central Administrative Tribunal, Madras Bench (hereinafter referred to as ‘the CAT’) in O.A. No. 355/2008, challenging the decision of the Puducherry administration to promote the Junior Engineers, who were originally Diploma holders and acquired degree during service, as Assistant Engineers under the Degree quota, immediately after they acquired their degree without insisting on a three-years of continuous service from the date of acquisition of the degree. Thi