Statutory service regulations prevail over executive instructions in promotion eligibility for feeder category employees.

Mandatory statutory service regulations governed promotion to Assistant Executive Engineer, and executive instructions could not override the prescribed eligibility criteria for feeder categories. The regulations framed under the Act set distinct qualifying service requirements for Junior Engineers and Draftsmen, and those norms remained binding because they had not been challenged. Even where executive instructions may apply generally in the absence of a fixed quota, they cannot render statutory eligibility conditions redundant or substitute pay-scale based preference for the regulatory scheme. The promotion panel challenge therefore failed, and promotions had to be assessed only against the statutory qualification requirements.

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Issues: Whether the executive instructions dated 13.10.1984 could govern promotion to the post of Assistant Executive Engineer in the face of the statutory service regulations prescribing specific eligibility criteria for the feeder categories.

Analysis: The Regulations framed under the enabling provisions of the Act prescribed distinct qualifying service requirements for Junior Engineers and Draftsmen seeking promotion. Those eligibility norms were mandatory and had not been challenged. The executive instructions, even if applicable in a general sense where no quota was fixed, could not be used in a manner that would render the statutory eligibility conditions otiose or permit executive preference based on pay-scale to override the regulatory scheme. A construction that gives primacy to the instructions over the Regulations would produce an impermissible inconsistency between executive directions and statutory regulations.

Conclusion: The executive instructions were inapplicable to displace the statutory promotion criteria, and the challenge to the promotion panel could not succeed.

Final Conclusion: The statutory regulations controlled the field, and the promotions had to be tested only on the basis of the prescribed regulatory eligibility requirements, not on the basis of the executive order.

Ratio Decidendi: Executive instructions cannot override mandatory statutory service regulations or dilute the eligibility conditions prescribed for promotion under those regulations.

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