The preference for district must be considered after appointment and the appointing authority should prepare a general merit list of the whole State and issue appointment orders in the order of merit prepared at the State level.

1. (Oral)- All these 689 writ petitions arise out of the selection held by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission under the Rajasthan Subordinate Offices Ministerial Staff Rules, 1957 for the post of LDC in the various subordinate offices under the Government of Rajasthan, Secretariat of the Government of Rajasthan and the Rajasthan Public Service Commission. The petitioners have come with the grievance that, although, the candidates having lesser percentage of marks in the examination held by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission have been appointed on the post of LDC, whereas they have been deprived of this appointment despite their higher percentage of marks.

2. Before I proceed with the facts and submissions made in these cases, it may be pointed out that earlier a bunch of 58 writ petitions was decided on 1st August, 1990 by a single bench of this Court [(1) judgment reported in 1990 (1) RLR 45] with regard to the same controversy being raised on behalf of 58 petitioners in those cases and all these 58 writ petitions were allowed on 1st August, 1990, in the following terms:-

"9. As already given out by the learned counsel for the respondents, 140 seats remained unfilled in Bikaner District and the petitioners can be given appointment on the vacant posts. It is, therefore, directed that since all the petitioners have given their second choice for appointment in Bikaner District they shall be considered to be given appointment on the posts still lying vacant in Bikaner District in order of merit, provided none of them has secured less than 38% marks. They shall be given seniority at appropriate place in accordance with their merit. So far as petitioners Ashok Kumar Chordh, Dilip Gupta and Kamlesh Savlani are concerned, who have approached this Court by way of letter petition, the RPSC shall verify the marks obtained by them and if they have got not less than 38% marks, they shall also be given appointment in Bikaner District in accordance with their merit. This shall be done within four works.

10. The writ petitions are allowed, as indicated above, with no order as to costs".

3. While the aforesaid judgment was appealed against by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission by way of filing D.B. Special Appeals (Writ) No. 263/90 and 264/1990 and these two Special Appeals were pending before the Division Bench several other writ petitions were filed before this Court by a large number of petitioners, because as per the earlier judgment of the Single Judge, the relief was granted and kept confined only to those candidates who had preferred the writ petitions. When the other candidates who were similarly situated to the 58 writ petitions or were having higher marks than these 58 writ petitioners found that they will not get the relief unless they also file writ petitions and claim the relief from the Court, they also started filing writ petitions. Hence, all these writ petitions raising common questions based on common facts have been filed with a common grievance and the same are being decided by this common judgment.

4. When all these matters came up before the Court on 5th September, 1990 and it was found that no reply had been filed in any of the petitions, the following order was passed:-

"During the course of arguments, it was considered necessary that the actual number of vacancies of LDCs which are available in various subordinate offices and the Secretariat and the office of the Rajasthan Public Service Commission, Ajmer, may be placed on the record of these proceedings. Further this information may also be placed on record as to how many persons are working against the posts of LDCs on urgent temporary basis and on daily wages in the aforesaid offices. Mr. Khan has submitted that he would also like to file the reply on behalf of respondents Nos. 1, 2 and 3 and he submits that looking to the large number of petitions, he may be permitted to argue the matters on the basis of the replies filed in the following cases:-