MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) to publish a reserve list for recruitment as mandatory under Rule 15-A of the Tamil Nadu State and Subordinate Service Rules, and to fill up vacancies through reserve list before issuing fresh notifications.
Justice R Mahadevan passed the order on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed by one Paramanandam, who had qualified in an examination in 2014 for the post of Assistants and Personal Clerk but could not get posting, seeking direction to appoint him in the vacancies that arose due to either non-joining or ‘leaving after joining’ of selected candidates based on merit list.
Taking note of the submissions and RTI reports produced by Paramanandam, the judge noted that there are a lot of vacancies to be filled up for the said post, owing to joining-and-leaving or non-joining of candidates who had been selected.
“When such being the position, as per Rule 15-A, a reserve list should be published by the TNPSC containing not less than 25% of the candidates of each group, including General Turn in the regular list.”
“Whereas, in this case, the TNPSC has not even published the reserve list, instead, published the notification for fresh recruitment, which resulted in denial of appointment to the petitioner, though he took part in the earlier selection process and was called for thrice,” he added. Therefore he directed TNPSC to consider the candidature of the petitioner and disposed of the petition.
Justice Mahadevan told the Commission to strictly follow Rule 15-A, adding that any deviation would be viewed seriously by the court in future. He gave directions to TNPSC to publish the reserve list and fill up such vacancies from the names of the reserve list.