Petitioner is appointed as Lecturer in the year 1998 and posted to Pingle Government Degree College for Women, Hanmakonda. She was later promoted as Principal and posted to Kakatiya Degree College, Hanmakonda on 14.9.2016 in which capacity she is presently working. Consequent to relaxing the ban on transfers, the respective departments of the State Government have taken up exercise to consider the requests for transfers. Higher Education Department vide G.O.Rt.No.115 Higher Education (TE) Department, dated 6.6.2018 notified transfer guidelines. Annexure appended to the Government Order provides the guidelines to affect transfers. In the transfer exercise now undertaken by the Higher Education Department, petitioner is identified as a person to be compulsorily transferred from Hanmakonda. This writ petition is filed by the petitioner challenging paragraph 4 (c) and paragraph 7 of the transfer guidelines. By orders in G.O.Rt.No.117 Higher Education (TE) Department, dated 7.6.2018, the cut off date to determine two years of service in a particular station is extended from 31.5.2018 to 31.8.2018. In the present writ petition, petitioner is also challenging the extension of cut off date.

2. Heard learned counsel for petitioner Sri P.V. Krishnaiah and learned Assistant Government Pleader for respondents and with their consent the writ petition is taken up for final disposal at the stage of admission.

3. Learned counsel for petitioner would contend that petitioner was promoted on 4.9.2016 and is working in the promoted post which is a State Cadre post, therefore while computing the standing for the purpose of consideration for transfer, the service rendered as Principal only to be counted and previous service as Lecturer cannot be counted. The clause incorporated in paragraph 4 (c) is illegal and arbitrary. He would further submit that clause in paragraph 7 determining the focal points based on House Rent Allowance (HRA) in an area is illegal. According to learned counsel, HRA is determined based on the consumer index, rental value of the area and other parameters. In urban areas, HRA is higher as compared to semi urban areas and rural areas, therefore in urban areas, higher HRA is paid. All the places where HRA is higher cannot be classified as focal point posts and on that criteria to deny the opportunity to choose a place as per transfer guidelines to any other place, amounts to discrimination and is without any rationale and against object sought to be achieved. He would further submit that fixing cut off date as 31.5.2018 to decide eligibility is directly attributable to decision taken by the Government lifting ban on transfers. Thus, enlarging the cut-off date to a later date by the Higher Education Department is per-se illegal. By relaxing the date and extending the date to 31.8.2018 grave injustice is caused to this petitioner. Cut-off date is extended only to accommodate certain persons affecting the others, therefore extension of cut-off date is arbitrarily made. He would further submit that as per the policy of the Government, in colleges exclusively meant for women only women teaching staff should be posted, whereas, various attempts are being made to post men in the colleges meant for women and that would be offending the policy of the Government not to post men in women’s colleges.

4. Per contra, learned Assistant Government Pleader would submit that station seniority is taken as basis, since even on promotion many employees are found to be working in same station and in the said manner many others are made to work in the stations of less significance or hardship places. Thus, while determining the service rendered by an employee, service rendered in a station including service rendered on promotion is also taken into consideration only to ensure that the claims of all employees can be affectively considered. He would further submit that in order to identify the categories of places where request transfers can be co