Supreme Court: The Bench comprising of T.S. Thakur, and R. Bhanumathi, JJ., held that in absence of provision for consequential seniority in the rules, the catch up rule will be applicable and the roster-point reserved category promotees cannot count their seniority in the promoted category from the date of their promotion and the senior general candidates if later reach the promotional level, general candidates will regain their seniority.
The common issues involved in bunch of appeals were that: Firstly, in the absence of policy decision taken by the State/rules framed pursuant to the enabling provision of Article 16-4A of the Constitution of India whether a reserved category candidate promoted on the basis of reservation earlier than his senior general category candidate in the feeder category can claim consequential seniority in the promotional post; Secondly, in the absence of policy decision taken by the State with regard to Tamil Nadu Highways Engineering Service Rules, whether Division Bench was right in holding that Article 16-4A of the Constitution of India by itself would give consequential seniority in addition to accelerated promotion to the roster-point promotees.
The bench after referring to the catena of cases from Indra Sawhney to M. Nagaraj, to clear out the present stand over matter stated that, the true legislative intent under Article 16-4A of the Constitution is to enable the State to make provision or frame rules giving consequential seniority for the accelerated promotion gained based on the rule of reservation. Rule 12 of impugned rules in question, evidently does not provide for the consequential seniority for reserved category promotees at any point of time. The consequential seniority for such reserved category promotees can be fixed only if there is express provision for such reserved category promotees in the State rules. In the absence of any specific provision or policy decision taken by the State Government for consequential seniority for reserved category accelerated promotees, there is no question of automatic application of Article 16-4A of the Constitution. The State is duty bound to collect data so as to assess the adequacy of representation of the Scheduled Caste candidates in the service and based on the same the State should frame a policy/rules for consequential seniority. S. Panneer Selvam v. Government of Tamil Nadu, 2015 SCC OnLine SC 764 Decided on 27.08.2015