HYDERABAD: The High Court on Monday quashed the entire seniority lists and all promotions made by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) in various category posts wherein persons promoted under the rule of reservation were given consequential seniority and promotion.
Justice M S Ramachandra Rao passed this order on a petition filed by J Subramanyam and 35 other employees challenging TTD’s action in extending consequential seniority to employees who were promoted under reserved category and not applying the “catch up” principle when general category candidates, promoted later, were entitled to regain their seniority. They contended that failure to restore the seniority of the general category candidates over that of reserved candidates was illegal and arbitrary.
Petitioners’ counsel Lakshmi Narasimha submitted that the TTD is a religious institution and has got its own rules and regulations and has framed service regulations. In terms of these regulations, although the rule of reservation in favour of SC and ST candidates is allowable, there is no rule giving consequential seniority to those persons. When a junior SC or ST candidate is promoted to the next higher category under rule of reservation superseding any OC candidate and when subsequently the senior OC candidate is promoted, the TTD is giving the benefit of seniority to the said junior SC/ST candidate. The authorities were doing this under the impression that when a person was promoted earlier then he was entitled to his seniority as per the date of promotion, he pointed out.
The counsel further pointed out that the above method of giving promotion and consequential seniority was contrary to the law laid down by the Supreme Court. At present, there was no rule providing for such consequential seniority. In the absence of any such rule in TTD, the “catch up” principle would apply i.e. when any person was promoted under rule of reservation earlier to any senior employee of general category and when the later subsequently was promoted, then he would automatically get his seniority over the junior SC/ST person.
When the TTD counsel submitted that there was no rule providing for consequential seniority, the judge quashed the entire seniority lists and also all promotions made by the TTD. He directed the TTD authorities concerned to review the seniority of all such persons under “Catch Up Rule” principle with all consequential benefits and to complete the exercise within a period of six weeks.