Venugopal, J.-

The writ petitioner is the appellant before this Court. He is a Class III Employee in the workshop branch of the Signals and Telecommunication department in the Southern Railway. There are 4 branches in the department and they are:- (1) Signals branch; (2) Telecommunication branch; (3) Workshop branch; and (4) Drawing branch.

The seniority of the employee in each branch is reckoned within that branch till they reach a pay scale of Rs. 700-900 and Rs. 840-1,040, and thereafter they are merged as a single entity within a common seniority roster, and they constitute Class III employees, in the Signals and Telecommunication department. The next avenue of promotion for them is Class II. Promotion to Class II posts are made on the result of a written examination followed by a viva voce test of candidates who qualify in the written examination. The written test consists of three papers. Part I of Paper I and Part I of Paper II are common and compulsory to all the four branches viz., Signals, Telecommunication, Workshop and Drawing. Contending that the compulsory questions under Part I in both Papers I and II are all signal-oriented and the workshop candidates without