Annual promotion review requires year-wise select lists; vacancies from different years cannot be clubbed into one consolidated exercise.

Promotion under the Indian Administrative Service (Appointment by Promotion) Regulations, 1955 is structured around annual review: the Selection Committee is required to meet ordinarily at intervals not exceeding one year, assess eligibility with reference to the relevant year, and prepare select lists linked to vacancies anticipated for that period. On that construction, vacancies of different years cannot be clubbed into one consolidated list merely because a yearly meeting was delayed. If a meeting is missed, the later exercise must proceed year by year with separate select lists based on each year's vacancies and eligible officers, preserving the mandatory annual scheme.

---

---

Issues: Whether vacancies for several years could be clubbed for preparing a select list for promotion to the Indian Administrative Service from the State Civil Service, and whether the Selection Committee was required to meet annually and prepare year-wise select lists.

Analysis: Regulation 5 of the Indian Administrative Service (Appointment by Promotion) Regulations, 1955 required the Selection Committee to ordinarily meet at intervals not exceeding one year, assess eligibility with reference to the first day of January of the year in which it met, and prepare a list linked to the vacancies anticipated within the relevant twelve-month period. The structure of the Regulations, including the limits on the field of consideration and the requirement that the list be reviewed and revised every year, showed that annual consideration was intended to be mandatory unless there was good reason for delay. The Court relied on the settled principle that promotion lists under the recruitment framework must be prepared annually, and that omission to do so cannot justify combining vacancies of multiple years into one consolidated list. If the Committee failed to meet in a given year, the later exercise had to proceed year-wise, with separate select lists prepared for each year on the basis of that year's vacancies and the officers eligible in that year.

Conclusion: Clubbing vacancies of different years for a consolidated select list was impermissible. Separate year-wise select lists had to be prepared, and the respondent was entitled to fresh consideration on that basis.

Final Conclusion: The impugned selection process was held to be contrary to the mandatory scheme of annual consideration under the promotion regulations, and relief was moulded by directing year-wise reassessment without disturbing appointments already made.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the promotion regulations link eligibility and the size of the select list to annual vacancies and annual review, the selection process must ordinarily be conducted year by year, and vacancies of different years cannot be validly clubbed into a single consolidated select list.

---