ORDER

This writ petition has been filed to issue a writ of Certiorarified Mandamus, to call for the records of the respondent 1 and 2 in connection with the impugned proceedings bearing nf Ref.No.21380/ 1/2016, dated 07.06.2016 and consequential impugned nf seniority list bearing Ref.No.18/ 1/2018, dated 02.02.2018 and quash the same in so far as Mr.R.Sridhar SI.No.113 in the impugned seniority and others like him in the seniority list up to SI.No.239, have been placed above the petitioners and direct the respondents 1 and 2 to treat the petitioners as seniors to the 3rd respondent and others of the same class and accordingly, direct the respondents 1 & 2, to issue orders of promotion to the post of Sub-Registrar Grade II for the petitioners.

2. The age old and the never ending controversy in the service jurisprudential landscape, constantly engaging the attention of the Courts over six decades, is the fixation of inter se seniority between direct recruits and promotees. The fixated controversy refusing to die down despite the rulings of this Court in multitude of litigations over the years and each time, when a resolution is found by the Courts, yet, the dispute manifests in variegated and kaleidoscopic form, shape and colour, from time to time and bounce back to the Courts seeking its attention all over again. The Courts painstaking efforts notwithstanding in laying down definite legal principles on the vexed issue, nevertheless, the dispute crawl back re-engaging the Courts, every now and then, at various points of time. The issue has been constantly engaging the attention of the Courts periodically for the last few decades, despite a Constitution Bench judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court formulating the legal principles to be applied to various contingencies that may arise in the matter of inter se fixation of seniority as between direct recruits and promotees. Finding a panacea has always been elusive, a conundrum each time and any order, direction or ruling on the issue, hold the field only upto a transitional point of time. It gets a new avatar after sometime and land on the lap of the Courts for its intervention, again and again interminably, having no end at all.

3. The present dispute is one more to be added to the multitude of litigations, yearning for judicial remedy. The petitioners herein are the direct recruits and the respondents 3 to 22 are the promotees at loggerheads in the matter of fixation of inter se seniority between them.

4. The brief facts which led to the filing of the present writ petition are stated hereunder:

(i) According to the petitioners, they are directly recruited Assistants working in the registration department. The private respondents 3 to 22 are rank promotees from the post of Junior Assistants. The petitioners were recruited as Assistants by selection through Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as Commission). The Commission issued a notification dated 30.12.2010, calling for applications for direct recruitment to various posts in different departments of the Government that included registration department. In the notification, number of vacancies for the post of Assistant were notified as 320. The recruitment was stated to be against the vacancies of the year 2010-11.

(ii) All these petitioners after being selected by the Commission, were appointed as Assistants directly on 18.12.2012. After their appointment as direct recruits, their seniority has been fixed on the basis of the ranks obtained by them in the selection. As far as the private respondents are concerned, they had been originally appointed as Junior Assistants on compassionate ground in the year 2007. Their appointments being on compassionate consideration, were not in conformity with the governing rules, at that point of time. Although the private respondents had been appointed as Junior Assistants in 2007, which was the feeder post for promotion to the post of Assistant, factually, their services a