The main legal point established in the judgment is that the selection should be confined to the vacancies notified in the 15.11.2009 advertisement, and subsequent vacancies should be filled based on later notifications.

1. The petitioners have come up with the above writ petitions, seeking a Mandamus to forbear the respondents from filling up 186 posts of Assistant Section Officers in the Secretariat (other than Law and Finance Department), bearing Post Code No.1072.

2. I have heard Mr.C.Selvaraju and Mr.AR.L.Sundaresan, learned Senior Counsel for the petitioners in the writ petitions, Mr.A.Navaneetha Krishnan, learned Advocate General assisted by Mr.N.Srinivasan, learned Additional Government Pleader appearing for the State of Tamil Nadu, Ms.C.N.G. Niraimathi and M.Devendran, learned Standing Counsel appearing for the TNPSC, Mr.N.G.R.Prasad, learned counsel appearing for some of the contesting respondents, Mr.R.Thiagarajan, learned Senior Counsel and Mr.Naveenkumar Murthy, learned counsel appearing for some of the contesting respondents.

3. While the petitioner in the first writ petition is an unemployed graduate, the petitioners in the second writ petition are working as Assistants in the Secretariat. All of them are aggrieved by the decision taken by the Government of Tamil Nadu to fill up 186 posts of Assistant Section Officers in the Secretariat (other than Law and Finance Department), on the basis of a notification bearing No.219 dated 15.11.2009 issued for selection to Combined Services Examination-I, despite the fact that these 186 posts were not included in the said notification dated 15.11.2009.

4. The brief facts leading to the above writ petitions are as follows:-

(i) The Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission issued an advertisement bearing No. 219 on 15.11.2009 inviting applications from eligible candidates for direct recruitment to various posts in the Combined Subordinate Services of the State of Tamil Nadu. 13 categories of posts for which the process of selection was to include a written examination followed by an oral test, were included in Table-1. 8 categories of posts for which the selection was to be made only through written examination were included in Table-2.

(ii) Since we are not concerned with the posts included in Table-2 of the selection notification, I am not making a reference to the same.

(iii) Out of the 13 categories of posts included in Table-1 of the selection notification, 11 categories of posts carried a scale of pay of Rs.9,300 - Rs.34,800/-+Rs.4,600/-. Two categories of posts carried the scale of pay of Rs.5,200 - Rs.20,200/- + Rs.2,400/-.

(iv) It may be necessary to take a note of those 11 out of 13 posts included in Table-1 of the notification, in order to understand the significance of the controversy raised in the writ petition. Therefore, the posts carrying the scale of pay of Rs.9,300-Rs.34,800/-, included from Serial Nos.1 to 11 of Table-1 in the selection notification, the service to which those posts belong, the Post Code Number of those posts and the number of vacancies notified, are furnished as follows:-

(v) The General Information provided under paragraph 3B of the Selection Advertisement prescribed that the number of vacancies advertised is only approximate and that it is liable for modification with reference to the vacancy position at any time before finalisation of selection for oral test or selection for appointment as the case may be.

(vi) Paragraph 4A of the notification prescribed minimum and maximum age limit of candidates, to be reckoned with reference to the date 1.7.2009.

(vii) Paragraph 4B of the notification prescribed the educational qualifications required for each of the posts. It was also indicated that those qualifications should be possessed by the candidates as on the date of the notification viz., 15.11.2009.

(viii) Since the advertisement was for filling up 11 categories of posts carrying a scale of pay of Rs.9,300-Rs.34,800/- and 10 categories of posts (2 under Table-1 and 8 under Table-2), carrying a scale of pay of Rs.5,200-Rs.20,200/-, paragraph 7 of the notification stipulated the guideline for the exercise of options. It was stated in paragrap