The main legal point established in the judgment is that an employee must possess the qualifications prescribed by the relevant rules to be entitled to hold a particular post.

1. The appellant-petitioner was appointed an attender in the service of the 2nd respondent. Co-operative Bank on 11-8-1972, at a time when no qualification was prescribed either for the post of attender or for that of Clerk. R.186 of the Kerala Co-operative Societies Rules, prescribing qualifications for various posts in co-operative societies, came into force on January I, 1974. The appellant-petitioner has no case that he possessed the qualifications prescribed by that rule. Subsequently, the appointment of the appellant-petitioner in the post of Attender was regularised; and as per the order dated 5-4-1983 the 2nd respondent-Bank had promoted and appointed him to the post of Clerk. By Ext. P3 order, however, his reversion from the post of Clerk for want of qualification was ordered. It is this order that was being challenged by the appellant-petitioner in the writ petition, which was dismissed by our learned brother Sivaraman Nair, J. by the judgment under appeal.

2. The counsel for the appellant-petitioner submitted that by virtue of the provisions contained in R.200 of the Co-operative Societies Rules, the appellant, who entered service before 1-1-1974 - on which date alone R.186 came into force - was entitled to be promoted to be a Clerk, irrespective of the fact whether the appellant-petitioner possessed of the qualifications prescribed for the post or not.

3. We are clear in our minds that it is R.186, not R.200, that would apply to the case of the appellant-petitioner. The purpose of R.186, as is clear from the very heading of the rule, is to prescribe the qualifications for the various categories of the post, while the purpose of R.200 is to save certain rights or privilege or emoluments they were entitled to on the date on which the rules came into force. Note (1) to R.186 reads as follows:

"Nothing in this rule shall apply to the present incumbents for the present post they hold." Rule 200 reads as follows:

"Nothing in these Rules or any rules made thereunder shall operate to debar from enjoyment of any person or employee of any right or privilege or emoluments to which he is entitled by the term of any contract or agreement or conditions of service subsisting between such person and a Co-operative Society on the date on which these Rules shall come into force. Nothing in these Rules shall be interpreted as disqualification for promotion to a higher post and benefits conferred by these rules to the existing employees of any Co-operative Society."

inasmuch as there was no qualification prescribed at the time of the coming into force of R.186 it could not be said that in terms of the qualification prescribed earlier, the appellant was entitled to promotion. The absence of qualification prescribed does not mean that for subsequent promotion, qualifications cannot be prescribed, as has been done by R.186. As a matter of fact, there was no rule that was in force, before the coming into force of R.186, which inter alia provided that a person in the position of the appellant-petitioner would be entitled to further promotions without acquiring any of the qualifications whatsoever in that behalf. Had there been any such rule, it would have been a good defence against the order in the nature of Ext. P3. The appellant-petitioner has no such case that the rule or contract of appointment earlier provided for promotion without acquiring qualifications.

4. The counsel for the appellant-petitioner cited the decision in OP. No. 2630 of 1978 and OP. No. 4094 of 1978 in support of his contention that in the case of those who were appointed prior to the coming into force of the Act, they were entitled to promotion without reference to the qualifications prescribed in the Rules. Those decisions, in our view, have no application to the present case governed by R.186. We also notice that what the framers of the rules had in mind was the protection of the rights of all those who were holding a particular post before the rule came i