Special recruitment rules control promotion eligibility, and omitted post-qualification experience requirements cannot be implied from general service rules.

A special executive recruitment order for the Kerala Medical Education Service was treated as the governing rule for promotion to Associate Professor because no framed recruitment rules existed. The order did not expressly require five years' physical teaching experience to be acquired only after the postgraduate qualification, and that omission was held intentional; the general Kerala State and Subordinate Services Rules could not add such a condition where the special order controlled the field. The note on promotion for want of qualified candidates was also held inapplicable because qualified candidates were available. The promotion was therefore upheld and the contrary High Court view set aside.

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Issues: Whether, in the absence of framed recruitment rules, the executive order dated 07 April 2008 governing appointments in the Kerala Medical Education Service required five years of physical teaching experience as Assistant Professor after acquiring the postgraduate qualification for promotion to Associate Professor, and whether Rule 10(ab) and Rule 28(b)(1A) of the Kerala State and Subordinate Services Rules, 1958 governed or displaced that executive order.

Analysis: The governing executive order for the teaching cadre did not expressly stipulate that the prescribed teaching experience had to be gained after acquiring the postgraduate degree, unlike the separate administrative cadre provisions where that requirement was specifically stated. The absence of that phrase in the teaching cadre provisions was treated as deliberate. Rule 10(ab) of the Kerala State and Subordinate Services Rules, 1958 was held inapplicable because the executive order operated as the special rule and, in any event, the rule itself yielded where experience was otherwise specified. Rule 28(b)(1A) was also held unavailable because that note applies only where no qualified candidate is available for promotion, which was not the position here.

Conclusion: The promotion did not suffer from illegality on the ground urged, and the High Court's contrary view was unsustainable. The tribunal's dismissal of the original applications was restored.

Final Conclusion: The appeals succeeded, and the challenged High Court orders were set aside in favour of the appointee, with the original applications dismissed.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a special executive recruitment order expressly prescribes post-qualification experience for one cadre but omits that requirement for another, the omission is intentional and cannot be supplied by invoking the general service rules unless those rules clearly govern the field without any contrary specification.

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