Ajay Kumar vs The Secretary Home, Govt. of H.P:. Shimla, at Shimla-1 and Others

V.K. Ahuja, J.—The petitioner has filed the present writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India alleging that he applied for the post of constable, which were advertised by the respondent department for Northern Range Dharamshala, District Kangra. He applied for the post under his category, that is, scheduled tribe and passed the written examination as well as physical test and the petitioner was called for the interview vide letter dated 20.9.2010 for 14.10.2010. The petitioner appeared in the interview and stood at serial No. 22 in the merit list. He had challenged the appointment of respondents No. 4 and 5 also from scheduled tribe, on the grounds of being arbitrary and malafide etc. He accordingly prayed that the appointment of respondents No. 4 and 5 be quashed and the petitioner be given appointment for the post under scheduled tribe category. Reply was filed by the respondents.

I have heard the learned counsel for the parties and have also gone through the record of the case.

The case of the respondent department is that two posts under scheduled tribe category were advertised, one under IRDP category and one was under unreserved category. The marks secured by the petitioner, respondent No. 4 and respondent No. 5 are as under:

Petitioner

76.83

marks Respondent No. 4

80.50

marks Respondent No. 5

77.00 marks

Accordingly, respondents No. 4 and 5 were given appointment under scheduled tribe (IRDP) and scheduled tribe (general).

In the supplementary affidavit filed by the Director General of Police on behalf of the State, it has been pleaded that respondent No. 4, who belongs to ST(IRDP) category had secured 80.50 marks and respondent No. 5, namely, Sawarn Singh, also candidate of ST (IRDP) secured 77.00 marks, while the petitioner who is from ST (unreserved) category had secured 76.83 marks as mentioned above. It was pleaded that though respondent No. 5 belongs to ST (IRDP) category, but keeping in view his higher merit, he has been recommended for appointment against ST (unreserved) category. It is, therefore, clear that respondents No. 4 and 5 being from the S.T. category were found more meritorious and were accordingly offered the appointment under IRDP category and unreserved category accordingly.

During the course of arguments, my attention has been drawn by the learned counsel for the petitioner to the decision of the Hon''ble Supreme Court in Ravinder Kumar Vs. State of Haryana and Others, . The observations made in Para-11 are relevant and are being reproduced below:-

It was argued by Mr. Patwalia and in our opinion rightly so that if an ex-serviceman candidate scored high enough marks entitling him to be selected in the Ex-servicemen (General) category, such candidates ought to be selected in the said category instead of selecting them in the Ex-servicemen BC(A) or BC(B) categories.

It is clear from the above decision that in case an ex-serviceman candidate scored high enough marks entitling him to be selected in the Ex-servicemen (General) category, such candidates ought to be selected in the said category instead of selecting them in the Ex-servicemen BC(A) or BC(B) categories.

No prayer has been made in the petition specifically that since respondents No. 4 and 5 were found more meritorious, they should have been considered under the general category and not under the S.T. category, under which they have applied. Respondents No. 4 and 5 were found more meritorious in their category and accordingly, they were selected and as such, no case is made out for consideration of the petitioner, since there were only two posts under the S.T. category. In view of the above discussion, no case is made out for allowing the petition filed by the petitioner, which is dismissed accordingly, so also the pending miscellaneous application(s), if any.