The date of appointment for determining seniority in a substantive post should be the date of actual appointment post-training, not the date of initial recruitment as an Apprentice.

ORDER :

M.DHANDAPANI, J.

The aforesaid batch of writ petitions have been filed before this Court broadly seeking the following reliefs :-

i) Refix the seniority of the petitioners by fixing their date of appointment in the post of Forest Apprentice on8.12.2014 and prepare a fresh inter se seniority list;

ii) Prepare seniority list as per the eligibility criteria prescribed in Rules 2, 5 and 9 of the Tamil Nadu Forest Subordinate Service Rules (for short ‘FSS Rules’);

iii) Assailing the relaxation granted under G.O. Ms. No.174 dated 22.12.2009 and G.O. Ms. Nos.319, 145, 199 and147 by relaxing the 8 year service period to 6 years;

iv) To grant time scale of pay of Rs.9300-34800 to the petitioners with Grade Pay – Rs.4600/- from their date of initial appointment as Forest Apprentice as per notification dated 23.12.2010;

v) Challenging the normalization method prescribed for fixing the inter se seniority of Forest Apprentice who underwent training at different centres, insofar as the direct recruits belonging to 2010-2011 batch and fix their seniority retrospectively; and

vi) Quash the letter dated 5.5.2025 in Ref. AA1/7007/2024 and letter dated 2.7.2025 in Ref. No.B2/32526/2023 as contrary to G.O. Ms. No.101 and declare the same as ultra vires, arbitrary and illegal.

2. The concise facts, which are necessary for appreciating and deciding the issue, are stated hereunder :-

Notification dated 24.11.2010 was issued by the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission calling for recruitment to the post of Forest Apprentice in the FSS Rules included in Group VI Services in respect of the vacancies for the years 2006- 07, 2007-08 and 2008-09 in the scale of pay of PB-2 Rs.9300 – 34800/= + GP Rs.4600/-. Pursuant to the selection process, provisional list was published, which was assailed before this Court, which ended up in appeal and, thereafter, before the Supreme Court through a Special Leave Petition and ultimately, the post of Forest Apprentice, which was the outcome of the aforesaid selection process was filled up by way of appointment order on 1.12.2014 of the 2nd respondent and the petitioners joined duty on 8.12.2014.

3. Upon their joining, the petitioners were sent for training and upon satisfactory completion of training, the petitioners’ probation was approved by regularisation of their service from the date of appointment on 8.12.2014 by including the period of training as duty as provided under Rule 9 (6)(a)(i) and (b)(i) of the Fundamental Rules of the Government of Tamil Nadu and Rule 9 (a) of the FSS rules and, they were appointed as Forest Range Officers and are presently working as Forest Range Officers for more than 9 years. It is the specific case of the petitioners that their seniority has not been considered by the respondents from the date of selection and the delay in their appointments, for no fault of theirs but, purely attributable to the department and, therefore, the petitioners claimed that they are entitled to seniority from the date of selection, as has been the consistent ratio laid down by the Apex Court.

4. It is the further averment of the petitioners that the manner in which the training period is to be calculated as duty period as per FR 9 (6)(a)(i) and (b) (i), which is spelt out in Letter No.(D) 131 dated 7.5.2010 which clearly states that the training period is to be reckoned as duty period and, therefore, the services of the petitioners having been regularized from the date of appointment/joining the post, which includes training period, the petitioners have been granted all the service benefits by various orders by the respondents.

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