1. A few Secondary Grade Teachers have come up with the above writ petitions, primarily seeking a Mandamus, to direct the respondents to prepare a panel of Secondary Grade Teachers eligible for promotion as B.T. Assistants in Middle Schools, including only the names of those Secondary Grade Teachers who have completed a 3 year Degree Course in the concerned discipline, after completing 10 years of High Schooling and 2 years of Higher Secondary Course. Some of the writ petitions also challenge, in addition to the above prayer, Clause 6 of an instruction issued by the Director of School Education dated 18.12.2008 by which the Panel Drawing Authorities were directed to include even those Secondary Grade Teachers who have completed a Degree of one year duration in the concerned subject. A few petitioners have challenged the panels drawn in a couple of Districts such as Thiruvallur and Salem Districts, in so far as those panels include the names of persons who have a degree of a duration of one year in the concerned subject.

2. I have heard Mr.N.G.R.Prasad, Mr.C.Selvaraju, learned Senior Counsel and Mr.M.Ravi, learned counsel appearing for the petitioners in the writ petitions, Mr.P.H.Arvindh Pandian, learned Additional Advocate General, assisted by Mr.M.C. Swamy, learned Special Government Pleader for the official respondents and Mr.K.M. Vijayan, learned Senior Counsel, M/S. G.Sankaran, P.V.S.Giridhar and S.N. Ravichandran, K.H.Ravi Kumar and Mrs.A.Arulmozhi, learned counsel appearing for the contesting/impleaded respondents.

3. The writ petitioners as well as the contesting respondents are at present employed as Secondary Grade Teachers. The official respondents have either already prepared or/been in the process of preparing panels for promotion to the post of B.T. Assistants in Middle Schools. Since the panels for promotion to the post of B.T. Assistant are prepared by the official respondents, on the basis of subject roster, depending upon the vacancies available in each of the subjects to be taught, the contesting respondents have secured additional degrees also known as 'dual degrees', whose duration is only one year, in the subjects concerned.

4. The grievance of the petitioners is that the contesting respondents have been included in the panels for promotion to the post of B.T. Assistants in the subjects in which they secured an additional/dual degree of a duration of one year and that therefore, they cannot be considered as eligible for promotion in the concerned subjects.

5. Therefore, the short question that arises for consideration in this batch of writ petitions is as to whether a person who obtained an additional/dual degree of a duration of one year in a particular subject, is entitled to be promoted to the post of B.T. Assistants in that particular subject or not.

6. Before I take up for consideration the core question, I must first deal with a preliminary objection raised by the learned counsel for the impleaded respondents, to the very maintainability of the writ petitions. The preliminary objection is that most of the writ petitioners have come up with a challenge to the panels for promotion, without making those already included in the panels as parties to the writ petitions. Therefore, the writ petitions, according to the learned counsel for the contesting respondents, are not maintainable, due to non-joinder of necessary and proper parties and that the attempt of the writ petitioners to get orders behind the back of persons whose inclusion in the panels are under challenge, is fraudulent.

7. At the outset, the above preliminary objection deserves to be rejected at least for two reasons. They are:-

(i) Many persons, whose names are found in the impugned panels, have now come up before me with applications for impleading and those impleading applications have been allowed by me. All the impleading petitioners are actually represented by a battery of eminent, effective, senior and forceful lawye