Judgment

SHARMA, J. : - The perpetual rivalry for seniority in service between the direct recruit and the promotees has once more engaged the attention of this Court for several days. The dispute which was brought to Court by S. B. Patwardhan in 1972 by a writ petition in the Bombay High Court and which was supposed to have been finally settled by the judgment of this Court reported in (1977) 3 SCR 775 has been kept alive by some direct recruits till this date. The events relevant for the case are spread over a long period and the issues joined by the parties have been described in the earlier judgments as involving ticklish and complicated questions of unrivalled complexity with no earlier case comparable. The position as now stands is that the field of controversy on legal questions has been considerably narrowed down by the earlier decisions of this Court, but the relevant facts and the issues to be settled have multiplied by further events and subsequent rules framed under the Proviso to Art. 309 of the Constitution.

2. For appreciating the controversy which has to be resolved, a brief survey of several sets of rules is necessary. The parties are Engineers in the employment of th