ORDER (Per B.R. Gavai, J.) :

1. The following issue is referred to this Larger Bench : " Whether project affected persons can be appointed without advertising the posts, ignoring their qualifications and merit."

2. Writ Petition No. 7472/2007 was filed in this court by some project affected persons, challenging the advertisement dated 17th August 2007, issued by the District Collector, Jalgaon, and the District Selection Committee for Jalgaon, challenging the requirement of submitting application and competing with other candidates from the said category as provided in the said advertisement. A direction was also sought to fill in 5% of the posts of Clerk-cum-Typist and Talathi from the project affected persons category, on the basis of seniority as mentioned in the register maintained by the respondent no.2 (District Collector, Jalgaon).

3. The Division Bench of this court, after considering the provisions of the Maharashtra Project Affected Persons Rehabilitation Act, 1999 (For short, hereinafter referred to as "the said Act") and various Government Resolutions / Circulars issued in that regard, upheld the contention of the petitioners, that the project affected persons were not required to go through regular selection process, for appointments to the posts from "priority quota" offered to them by the said Act, and allowed the petition with the following directions :

" We, therefore, allow the writ petition although not strictly in terms of prayer clauses.

.(1) We uphold the contention advanced on behalf of the petitioner, that so far as appointments of PAPs to 5% priority quota, they are not required to apply, as if open market candidates; in response to an advertisement nor they are required to compete with open market candidates. They are also not required to compete between themselves and ordinarily they should be appointed in order of seniority. The only occasion for making an exception would be for observation of compartmentalised reservations e.g. if there are 10 posts in a Department for PAPs category and 5 posts are already filled in by open category and, therefore, there are vacancies only of reserved category, open category PAP in the wait list will have to make a room for candidate below him of reserved category.

(2) The recruitment, if any, carried out by the respondents pursuant to advertisement dated 17-8-2007, so far as it relates to PAPs category, must be held vitiated and quashed.

(3) In the light of view taken by us as above, it is desirable to direct learned A.G.P. to place a copy of this judgment before the Chief Secretary of the State for appropriate directions to all appointing authorities referred in clauses (a) and (b) of Sub-section (6) of Section 10 of Act XI of 2001. They should be directed to :

(i) Take an assessment of total cadre strength in Class III and IV (Class 'C" and "D") (non technical) of each Departments, find out how many seats are available to PAPs as "priority quota" and how many are vacant.

(ii) For vacancies identified, all the appointing authorities should ask for the names of PAP candidates registered with Collector/Resettlement Officer, who are eligible for appointment as per rules (by giving due consideration to social reservations i.e. to vacancies of reserved category, the first candidate from that category in the seniority list should be sponsored) and issue appropriate appointment orders to such candidates sponsored from seniority list.

(iii) Now onwards there should be no need to advertise the vacancies available for PAPs and appointments of PAPs should be carried out strictly in accordance with the instructions so far issued by the Government from time to time, i.e. strictly from the seniority list maintained by Collector/Resettlement Officer on verifying the eligibility according to rules for the post and without any competitive examination.

(iv) The exercise of identifying the vacancies and filling those, all over the State and with all appointing authorities, should

Click Here to Read the rest of this document