Dama Seshadri Naidu, J.

Introduction:

Two sets of persons, with diverse qualifications, enter service as Secondary School Assistants, at different times. They are placed in different categories of seniority, not based on their date of joining, but based on their qualification. With time, the teachers who are placed in lower category rise through the rungs, after acquiring additional qualifications. Thus, most may get paced in one common higher category, sooner or later. But those who scale up and reach that particular category later may have actually joined the service earlier.

2. The Questions:

2(a). Here, the question is, once persons from different sources enter a common category, how should their seniority be reckoned?

2(b). Is it from the date of their entering and continuously officiating in the service or from the date of their acquiring qualification to reach that common category?

2(c). Is there any universal principle for this proposition or does it depend on the rules of service?

Facts:

WP No.14242 of 2018:

3. In W.P.(C) No.14242 of 2018, there are 13 petitioners; they all work as assistant teachers in the fifth Respondent school. All the petitioners, in fact, entered the service as trained graduate teachers, possessing the requisite qualifications. The school is Government recognised, with both aided and unaided secondary divisions. It is governed by the Maharashtra Employees of Private Schools (Conditions of Services) Regulation Act, 1977, and the eponymous Rules, 1981.

4. The fifth Respondent school has also appointed a few persons as trained undergraduate teachers. Some of those teachers later acquired B.Ed., qualification. Thus, they too have become trained graduate teachers. Annually, the school prepares a seniority list of all teachers working in it. That seniority list must accord with the statutory mandate in schedule F, under Rule 12 of the Rules. Based on their entry into service and their qualifications, the teachers have been placed under Categories C to H.

5. As the record reveals, some of the untrained undergraduate teachers joined the service earlier than the trained graduate teachers. Across the state, these teachers, as it is pleaded, have demanded that once they acquired the requisite qualification while in service, their seniority must be reckoned from the date of their initial appointment and continuous officiation. These claims by the trained undergraduate teachers and the counterclaims by the trained graduate teachers have engendered much subordinate legislation-Government Resolutions (GR)-and unavoidable litigation, too.

6. The Government Circular dated 24th January 2017 and the Government Circular dated 14th November 2017, that is exhibits G and H respectively, are the regnant government resolutions that hold the field. In fact, guided by these circulars, the Respondent school prepared Exhibit D seniority list. In that list, the petitioners were shown below the fifth and sixth Respondent teachers. These Respondents earlier had their entry as trained undergraduate teachers but rose in the ranks with their later-acquired qualifications.

7. Aggrieved, the petitioners challenged exhibits G and H circulars and, consequently, sought the invalidation of Exhibit D seniority list, as well.

WP (ST) No.33510 of 2018:

8. In this writ petition, there are 96 petitioners. None of the rival contenders to the seniority finds arrayed as a respondent, though.

WP No.11022 of 2018:

9. Here, there are 19 petitioners. As with WP No.33510 of 2018, no rival contender is seen arrayed.

WP (ST) No.32036 of 2018:

10. In this Writ Petition there are two petitioners; they have a seniority dispute with the Respondents 5, 6 7. In fact, the first petitioner is a registered association of the teachers having B.Ed., qualification.

WP No.3970 of 2018; WP No.11695 of 2018; WP 14256 of 2018:

11. In each of these writ petitions, there is a sole petitioner. He has his seniority dispute with the respondent teachers, as arrayed in each one.

Submi