The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Stay on appointment of engineers vacated

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Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Stay on appointment of engineers vacated

Staff Reporter

In Highways Department; subject to final outcome of case

MADURAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday vacated the stay on appointing 157 Assistant Engineers in the State Highways Department.

A Division Bench comprising Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla and Justice S. Palanivelu in the Madurai Bench said that withholding the recruitment process would not be in the interest of administration. However, the appointments shall be subject to the final outcome of the case. The stay was granted on September 19 in a public interest litigation petition filed by Central and State Government SC/ST Employees’ Welfare Trust. The trust sought to restrain the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission from going ahead with the present recruitment of 215 Assistant Engineers without filling up the backlog vacancies meant for SC/STs.

It claimed that there were 157 backlog vacancies meant for SC/STs in the Highways Department according to a 1998 report submitted by a high-level committee headed by the then Minister for Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare. The Additional Advocate General N. Kannadasan said that the petitioners had filed the case based on old statistics. He said that the composite Highways Department was bifurcated into Highways Department and Rural Development Department pursuant to the submission of the 1998 report.

Consequently, there was a division in the cadre strength of 1,114 vacancies. After bifurcation, the cadre strength in the Highways Department was fixed at 748 with the rest allotted to the Rural Development Department.

The number of posts already reserved for SC/STs would exceed the mandatory 19 per cent in view of the revised cadre strength, he said.

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