1. In October 1946, the petitioner, a law graduate, who was a clerk in the Travancore Secretariat acting in the grade Rs. 100-125/- was, on his own application (Ext. R-2 dated 16 31946), appointed as a Second Classes Magistrate, a post carrying a fixed pay of Rs. 150/- and at that time attached to the Revenue Department. [It was then usual for clerks in the Secretariat to improve their prospects by securing appointment by transfer to higher posts in other departments, especially the Revenue Department. Those with law qualifications found it easy enough to secure appointment to posts requiring such qualifications, and, generally speaking, they were able to secure promotion to the post of Assistant Peishkar or Deputy Collector borne on the same cadre as the post of Assistant Secretary, before they would have become Assistant Secretaries in the ordinary course had they remained in the Secretariat. But there was no rule (at any rate none has been brought to our notice Article 101A of the Travancore Service Regulations to which reference has been made concerns itself with service in one post counting for increment in another on the same scale of pay to which an officer may b