CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has ordered the State to respond to a plea moved by Tamil Nadu State Highways SC/ST Employees’ Welfare Association for the filling vacancies under the SC/ST quota. The petitioner stated that there are over 1,500 vacancies in the department since 2016.
Petitioner S Asaithambi, general secretary of the association, submitted that the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department had, in 2016, passed an order to fill the vacancies in the State Highways Department as per the instructions of the Director-General of Highways Department for the uplift of SC/ST people. The petitioner, also being a member of the grievance redressal committee of the Highways Department, said there were a total of 1,848 vacancies to be filled under the SC/ST category.
The petitioner said a high-power committee constituted by the State submitted that the Highways Department through direct recruitment alone in A, B, C and D category found that the Adi Dravidar category alone had 1,234 posts vacant and 614 posts in the Tribal category. The petitioner wanted the court to direct the Highways Department to clear the backlog of vacancies in the SC/ST category.
Recording the submissions made by the petitioner, a two-member bench comprising Justices M Sathyanarayanan and R Hemalatha issued the notices to the department to file a detailed repot by April 5.
Petitions by grooms
The order was passed in one of the two petitions filed in 2018 in which two Indian grooms having Sri Lankan brides were struggling to register their marriage