The principle of delay and latches in approaching the court for relief, and the impact of settled issues by the Honourable Supreme Court on subsequent petitions.

ORDER :

The relief sought for in the present writ petition is to call for the records from the second respondent vide letter C.No.D1/004125/2017 dated 11.10.2017, quash the same and consequently, direct the second respondent to give appointment of Sub-Inspector of Police in Tamil Nadu Uniform Services, in pursuant to the order made in WP No.23537 of 2005 dated 27.01.2016 passed by this Court.

2. The petitioner states that he is working as Special Sub Inspector in Tamil Nadu Police Department. The Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board invited applications from the eligible candidates for appoint to the post of Sub Inspector of Police Category-I under 20% quota from departmental candidates. The petitioner submitted his application and participated in the process of selection in Chennai Range in all the three stages, namely, physical efficiency test, written test and viva voce.

3. The grievance of the petitioner is that the similarly placed persons, whose cases were not considered for appointment to the post of Sub Inspector of Police, approached the Tamil Nadu Administrative Tribunal and thereafter High Court and thereafter the Honourable Supreme Court. The Apex Court passed an order directing the Department to extend the benefits granted by the High Court to all the similarly placed persons, if they are otherwise eligible and qualified based on the marks secured by them in the selection process. The Apex Court further held that the benefits granted to the similarly placed persons need not be restricted to the persons, who approached the Court, but it is to be extended to the persons, who have not approached the Court, but eligible for selection and appointment.

4. The learned Standing Counsel, appearing on behalf of the second respondent contended that the claim of all those persons was considered and in some cases, the Department rejected the claim of those persons and second round of litigations were filed by them before the High Court and the claim of those persons were directed to be considered and they were appointed accordingly.

5. This Court is of the considered opinion that the persons, who were all along waiting till the disposal of all these litigations, filed fresh writ petitions in the year 2014-2015. In other words, third batch of writ petitions was filed belatedly after the disposal of cases by the Honourable Supreme Court. All such cases were tagged together and a common Judgment was passed by this Court by elaborately considering the issues on 27.01.2016. This Court has dealt with Category-III, which all are falling under the category of delay and latches. In this regard, this Court observed as follows:

“Issue No.III

39. In Kunhayammed and Others v. State of Kerala and Another [(2000) 6 SCC 359] it has been held that if the judgment of the High Court has come up to the Supreme Court by way of a special leave, and special leave is granted and the appeal is disposed of with or without reasons, by affirmative or otherwise, the judgment of the High Court merges with that of the Supreme Court. In that event, it is not permissible to move the High Court by review because the judgment of 63 the High Court has merged with the judgment of the Supreme Court. It has been further held that dismissal of SLP by the words “dismissed on merits” would remain a dismissal by a non-speaking order where no reasons have been assigned and no law has been declared by the Supreme Court; the dismissal is not of the appeal but of the special leave petition and even if the merits have been gone into, they are the merits of the special leave petition only and neither doctrine of merger nor Article 141 of the Constitution is attracted to such an order.

40. This Court, while answering Issue No. I has dealt with the case of Mr.M.Muthukumar/petitioner in W.P.No.25146 of 2014 and S.L.P(C)No.3950-3951 of 2014, which came to be dismissed on the ground of delay with costs and in the light of the ratio laid down in the above cited decisions, it ca