TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2014 (2) TMI 1300
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....al rights guaranteed to the writ petitioners under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. We shall presently formulate the questions that arise for determination more specifically but before we do so, we consider it necessary to set out the factual matrix in which the entire controversy arises. 2. In a note submitted to the State Cabinet on 15th May 1990 the problem of over 2000 unemployed degree-holders in various branches of Engineering who had passed out from several Engineering colleges since the year 1984 was highlighted and a proposal for utilizing the manpower so available for the benefit of the State economy mooted. The proposal envisaged a twofold action plan for absorbing the unemployed graduate Engineers. The first part of the action plan provided for withdrawal of 127 posts of Assistant Engineers that had been referred to the Public Service Commission and advertised by it to be filled up by appointing unemployed degree holder Engineers in a nonclass II rank. The second part of the proposal envisaged creation of 614 posts of Junior Engineers in different Departments to accommodate the unemployed degree holders. These 614 posts comprised 314 new posts proposed to be cre....
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.... 5. As a sequel to the above decision, the Government invited applications from unemployed graduate Engineers of all disciplines for empanelment as Stipendiary Engineers for placement in different Government departments, projects, public sector undertakings, co-operative societies and industries etc. By another resolution dated 22nd September 1990, the Government stipulated the procedure to be adopted for discipline-wise empanelment of the unemployed graduate Engineers for appointment as Stipendiary Engineers against the vacancies in different departments and undertakings. The procedure evolved was to the following effect : "2. Government have since decided that the following procedure should be adopted for discipline wise empanelment of the unemployed Graduate Engineers for appointment as Stipendiary Engineers against the vacancies in different government Department and undertakings: (1) 25 percent of the posts shall be filled up on merit basis and for this purpose equal number will be taken from each batch starting from the batch of 1984 up to the batch of 1989. (2) A point system will be adopted for empanelment on merit basis, for which out of a total 100 marks the perfor....
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....teps to de-reserve the vacancies and give appointment to general candidates in their place. (10) The normal requirement for new appointment under Government viz. production of original certificates, Medical Certificate, Schedule Caste/Scheduled Tribe Certificate etc. shall be applicable to these appointments and the verification of these documents shall be the responsibility of the Employing Departments/Undertakings. (11) In some cases relaxation of age limit for entry into Government service may have to be done and this will be attended to by the Employing Departments/Undertakings as a matter of course. ORDER Ordered that the Resolution be published in the Orissa Gazette for general information. Ordered also that copies of the Resolution be forwarded to all Departments of Government, Member, Board of Revenue, All Heads of Departments, All District Collectors, Secretary to Governor, Registrar, Orissa High Court Secretary, OPSC, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and Director of Printing, Stationary and Publication, Orissa Cuttack and 50 copies of Planning & Coordination Department. BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNOR S.SUNDARARANJAN ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER ....
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....t for direct recruitment, it proposed to carve out what was described as selection quota of 30% for absorption of the Stipendiary Engineers to the extent of 25% of the vacancies and degree holder Junior Engineers against the remaining 5% of the vacancies. The balance of 37% of the vacancies was, however, left to be filled up by direct recruitment from the open market. 9. Based on the above, the Government appears to have made a reference to the Orissa Public Service Commission on 5th June 1996 for approval of the draft Orissa Engineering Service (Recruitment & Condition of Service) Rules, 1994 which were already approved by the State Council of Ministers on 3rd December 1994. The Orissa Public Service Commission, however, struck a discordant note. In its opinion, since the Stipendiary Engineers did not constitute a cadre in the formal sense it was not desirable to treat it as a feeder grade for Assistant Engineers. So also the proposal to reserve 5% of the vacancies in the grade of Assistant Engineers to be filled by degree holder Junior Engineers from the Subordinate Service was also considered to be inadvisable. The Commission opined that since persons with higher qualifications....
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....so be appointed as Assistant Engineers or in equivalent posts carrying the same scale, subject to their suitability and satisfactory performance." 11. The resolution notwithstanding, the Government does not appear to have appointed any Stipendiary Engineers as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis. Aggrieved, the Stipendiary Engineers filed O.J.C. Case No.8373 of 1995 Jayanta Kumar Dey and Ors. v. State of Orissa and Ors. for a writ of mandamus directing the Government to comply with the resolution and the order issued by it. This petition was allowed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Orissa at Cuttack by an order dated 18th December 1996. The High Court directed the Government to take expeditious steps to implement resolution dated 12th March 1996, preferably within a period of four months. It further directed the State Government to appoint Stipendiary Engineers as Assistant Engineers in the scale of Rs. 2000-3500 on ad hoc basis. In compliance with the directions aforementioned, the Stipendiary Engineers were appointed as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis between the years 1997 and 2001. What is important is that pursuant to its initial proposal of allocating 5% vacanc....
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....ipendiary Engineers is limited to 881 only as the rest have either resigned, retired or died. The proposal made in the Memorandum also took note of the information given by the Orissa Public Service Commission and the repeated demands of ad hoc Assistant Engineers engaged from Stipendiary Engineers for regularization. The proposal stated that no regular appointments were made by the Orissa Public Service Commission and that the validation of appointments of Stipendiary Engineers as Assistant Engineers will immensely benefit the State in execution of several ongoing development works. The proposal further stated that having rendered more than 10 years of service, these Stipendiary Engineers currently working as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis will have no avenues for employment as they had already gone beyond the upper age limit prescribed for direct recruitment. 14. It is in the above backdrop that the State Legislature eventually enacted Orissa Service of Engineers (Validation of Appointment) Act, 2002 which comprises no more than three sections. Section 3 of the legislation reads as under: "3(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Recruitment Rules, seven hundred nin....
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....nst 5% quota disapproved by the Public Service Commission for such Engineers. 17. Writ Petition No.16742 of 2006 was filed by Junior Engineers promoted as Assistant Engineers against 33% quota reserved for such Engineers whose grievance primarily was that regularisation/validation of the appointments of Stipendiary Engineers in the cadre of Assistant Engineers was illegal and unconstitutional and adversely affected them in terms of their seniority. 18. The above writ petitions were heard by a Division Bench of the High Court of Orissa who allowed the same by its order dated 15th October, 2008 striking down the impugned Legislation primarily on the ground that the same brought about discrimination between Assistant Engineers similarly situate and, therefore, fell foul of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. The High Court observed: "There is no reason as to why appointments of a few persons working as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis have been validated ignoring the other similarly situated persons working on ad hoc basis as Assistant Engineers. There cannot be discrimination or classification amongst the persons working on ad hoc basis or the post of Assistant Engineers. ....
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....is to remove the causes for ineffectiveness or invalidating of actions or proceedings, which are validated by a legislative measure". In ITW Signode India Ltd. v. Collector of Central Excise (2004) 3 SCC 48, this Court described Validation Act to be an Act that "removes actual or possible voidness, disability or other defect by confirming the validity of anything which is or may be invalid". 23. The pre-requisite of a piece of legislation that purports to validate any act, rule, action or proceedings were considered by this Court in Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. and Ann v. Broach Borough Municipality and Ors. (1969) 2 SCC 283. Two essentials were identified by this Court for any such legislation to be valid. These are: (a) The legislature enacting the Validation Act should be competent to enact the law and; (b) the cause for ineffectiveness or invalidity of the Act or the proceedings needs to be removed. 24. The Court went on to enumerate certain ways in which the objective referred to in (b) above could be achieved by the legislation and observed : "........ Sometimes this is done by providing for jurisdiction where jurisdiction had not been properly invested before. Some....
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....hen the answer to all these three questions is in the affirmative that the Validation Act can be held to be effective and the consequences flowing from the adverse pronouncement of the Court held to have been neutralised. Decisions of this Court in Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. and Anr. V. Broach Borough Municipality and Ors. (1969) 2 SCC 283, Hari Singh v. Military Estate Officer (1972) 2 SCC 239, Madan Mohan Pathak v. Union of India (1978) 2 SCC 50, Indian Aluminium Co. etc. v. State of Kerala and Ors. (1996) 7 SCC 637, Meerut Development Authority etc. v. Satbir Singh and Ors. etc. (1996) 11 SCC 462, and ITW Signode India Ltd. v. Collector of Central Excise (2004) 3 SCC 48 fall in that category. Even in the realm of service law, validation enactments have subsequent to the pronouncement of competent Courts come about validating the existing legislation. Decisions of this Court in I.N. Saksena v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1976) 4 SCC 750, Virender Singh Hooda and Ors. v. State of Haryana and Anr. (2004) 12 SCC 588 and State of Bihar and Ors. v. Bihar Pensioners Samaj (2006) 5 SCC 65 deal with that category of cases. 26. In the case at hand, the State of Orissa had not suffered a....
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....urpose of facility of reference. If I may use the phrase, it is a statutory nickname to obviate the necessity of always referring to the Act under its full and descriptive title....Its object is identification and not description." (emphasis supplied) 29. Dr. Dhawan, learned senior counsel appearing for the appellants fairly conceded that the impugned legislation could not be described as a simple Validation Act. According to him, the Act achieved a dual purpose of (a) validating the invalid ad hoc appointments and (b) appointing the Stipendiary Engineers working as ad hoc Assistant Engineers on a substantive basis by regularising their appointments. While we have no difficulty in agreeing with the latter part of the contention urged by Dr. Dhawan and holding that the legislation regularises the appointment of Stipendiary Engineers as Assistant Engineers, we have not been able to appreciate the rationale behind the Legislature considering it necessary to validate the ad hoc appointments, especially when such appointments had been made by the Government pursuant to the directions issued by the High Court in the writ petitions filed by the Stipendiary Engineers. Validation of the ....
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....e legislation being a validating enactment and in our opinion rightly so. That is because the essence of a validating enactment is a pre-existing act, proceeding or rule, being found to be void or illegal with or without a judicial pronouncement of the Court. It is only when an act committed or a rule in existence or a proceeding taken is found to be invalid that a validating act may validate the same by removing the defect or illegality which is the basis of such invalidity. There is no question of validating something that has not been done or that has yet to come in existence. No one can say that an illegality which has not yet been committed can or ought to be validated by legislation. Existence of an illegal act, proceedings or rule or legislation is the sine qua non for any validating legislation to validate the same. There can be no validation of what has yet to be done, suffered or enacted. 32. Applying the above to the case at hand a Validation Act may have been necessary if the Government had appointed the ad hoc Assistant Engineers on a substantive basis in violation of the relevant recruitment Rules. For in that case, the Government would have done an act which was leg....
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....l or irregularly appointed persons could never be an alternative mode of recruitment to public service. Such recruitments were, in the opinion of this Court, in complete negation of the guarantees contained in Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Having said so, this Court did not upset the regularisations that had already taken place, regardless of whether such regularisations related to illegal or irregular appointments. The ratio of the decision in that sense was prospective in its application, leaving untouched that which had already happened before the pronouncement of that decision. This is evident from the following passage appearing in the decision: "We also clarify that regularization, if any already made, but not subjudice, need not be reopened based on this judgment, but there should be no further by-passing of the constitutional requirement and regularizing or making permanent, those not duly appointed as per the constitutional scheme." 35. The above is a significant feature of the pronouncement of this Court in Umadevi's case (supra). The second and equally significant feature is the exception which this Court made in para 53 of the decision permitting a one-time....
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....cision in Umadevi's case (supra) stated the true legal position on the subject but having regard to the fact that several earlier decisions of this Court had sanctioned regularisation of those not regularly appointed, this Court was of the view that upsetting such regularisations would not only unsettle what stood settled but also gravely prejudice those who are benefitted from such orders of regularisation. There is no gainsaying that most of such persons who entered the public service initially without going through any open competitive selection process would have lost by passage of time their prospects of entering public service by legal course even if vacancies were available for such appointments. In some of the decisions the continuance of employees on ad hoc, temporary or daily-wage basis for an indefinite period was seen by this Court also to be a violation of the fundamental right to life apart from being discriminatory. Considering the magnitude of the problem that would arise if all such appointments were to be unsettled, this Court in Umadevi's case (supra) left such regularisation alone and declared that in the future such orders of appointments dehors rules would not....
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....ittedly, eligible to be appointed as Assistant Engineers in the direct recruitment quota. They could not make a grievance against regularisation simply because of the fact that those regularised may figure above them in seniority. Seniority is an incident of appointment to the cadre which must be regulated by the relevant rules. Any possible prejudice to diploma holders in terms of seniority would not, therefore, make the regularisation unconstitutional or illegal and hence beyond the purview of para 53 in Umadevi's case (supra). 38. Mr. Patwalia, learned senior counsel appearing for the degree holder Junior Engineers who were also appointed on ad hoc basis as Assistant Engineers against 5% quota which the Government resolution had provided for, argued that although degree holder Junior Engineers are eligible for appointment against the vacancies in direct recruits quota, that opportunity was not available to his clients when the degree holder Junior Engineers were appointed as Assistant Engineers. He contended that Junior Engineer degree holders who were appointed as ad hoc Assistant Engineers against 5% quota reserved for them under the Government resolution would have no object....
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....he above that there is an exception to the general principles against "regularisation" enunciated in Umadevi, if the following conditions are fulfilled: (i) The employee concerned should have worked for 10 years or more in duly sanctioned post without the benefit or protection of the interim order of any court or tribunal. In other words, the State Government or its instrumentality should have employed the employee and continued him in service voluntarily and continuously for more than ten years. (ii) The appointment of such employee should not be illegal, even if irregular. Where the appointments are not made or continued against sanctioned posts or where the persons appointed do not possess the prescribed minimum qualifications, the appointments will be considered to be illegal. But where the person employed possessed the prescribed qualifications and was working against sanctioned posts, but had been selected without undergoing the process of open competitive selection, such appointments are considered to be irregular." 41. It is nobody's case that the degree holder Junior Engineers were not qualified for appointment as Assistant Engineers as even they possess degrees from ....
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....de pursuant to a notification by which everyone who was unemployed and held an Engineering degree in any discipline was free to make an application. A large number of unemployed engineers responded to the notification inviting applications out of whom nearly 932 were selected by a Selection Committee constituted for the purpose. What is significant is that the empanelment of the unemployed degree holders for appointment as Stipendiaries did not invite any criticism from any quarter either as to the method of appointment or the fairness of the selection process. The process of appointment was at no stage questioned before the Court, a feature which is notable keeping in view the number of people appointed/empanelled and a larger number who were left out and who could have possibly made a grievance if there was any. It is not, therefore, wholly correct to suggest that the entry of the degree holder Junior Engineers as Stipendiary Engineers and later as Assistant Engineers was through "the backdoor", an expression very often used in service matters where appointments are made de hors the rules. The process of selection and appointments may not have been as per the relevant rules as th....
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....eers on ad hoc basis and their subsequent regularisation came as a side wind or was inspired by any political or other consideration. The Government, it appears, was from the very beginning, keen to utilise the services of unemployed Graduate Engineers selected on their merit by the Selection Committee and, therefore, remained steadfast in its efforts for achieving that purpose and in the process going even to the extent of getting them regularised by a legislative measure. Suffice it to say that the question whether regularisation was justified cannot be viewed in isolation or divorced from the context in which the same arises. 48. We may now turn to the contention urged by Mr. Patwalia, that the impugned Legislation was discriminatory in as much as it granted regularisation to persons similarly situated while denying such benefit to his client who not only held a degree qualification like the Stipendiary Engineers but were in terms of the Government resolution promoted as Ad hoc Assistant Engineers against 5% quota reserved for them. It was argued that State could not have classified ad hoc Assistant Engineers who came from the Stipendiary Engineers stream, on one hand, and thos....
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...., has of necessity to make laws operating differently on different groups or classes of persons within its territory to attain particular ends in giving effect to its policies, and it must possess for that purpose large powers of distinguishing and classifying persons or things to be subjected to such laws. (3) The constitutional command to the State to afford equal protection of its laws sets a goal not attainable by the invention and application of a precise formula. Therefore, classification need not be constituted by an exact or scientific exclusion or inclusion of persons or things. The courts should not insist on delusive exactness or apply doctrinaire tests for determining the validity of classification in any given case. Classification is justified if it is not palpably arbitrary. (4) The principle underlying the guarantee of Article 14 is not that the same rules of law should be applicable to all persons within the Indian territory or that the same remedies should be made available to them irrespective of differences of circumstances. It only means that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike both in privileges conferred and liabilities imposed. Equa....
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....sification is not arbitrary in the sense abovementioned. xxx xxx xxx (11) Classification necessarily implies the making of a distinction or discrimination between persons classified and those who are not members of that class. It is the essence of a classification that upon the class are cast duties and burdens different from those resting upon the general public. Indeed, the very idea of classification is that of inequality, so that it goes without saying that the mere fact of inequality in no manner determines the matter of constitutionality. xxx xxx xxx" 50. Applying the above to the case at hand, the first and foremost question would be whether the classification of ad hoc Assistant Engineers is reasonable, that there is a reasonable differentia that distinguishes those grouped together for the grant of the benefit from those left out and if there is such a differentia, whether the classification has a reasonable nexus with the object underlying the legislation. 51. The second and by no means less important is the question whether the impugned legislation is ultra vires of Article 14 because of under inclusion. That is because the argument of the writ petitioners in sub....
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....gislation, however, has limited its beneficence to ad hoc Assistant Engineers who came in as Stipendiary Engineers pursuant to a policy decision of the State Government that aimed at utilising their services and dealing with the unemployment problem in the State. That being the object, ad hoc Assistant Engineers appointed by other modes or in circumstances other than those in which Stipendiaries entered the service, cannot cry foul or invite the wrath of Article 14 upon the legislation. As a matter of fact, the State Government's resolve to give 5% vacancies to in service degree holder Junior Engineers itself brought about a classification between Stipendiaries on one hand and the in-service Junior Engineers on the other. The proposed reservation having run into rough waters because of the opposition of the Orissa Public Service Commission, the in-service Junior Engineer writ petitioners before the High Court lost their fight for a share in the higher cadre of Assistant Engineers based on their higher qualification. Suffice it to say that Stipendiary Engineers later appointed as ad hoc Assistant Engineers were a class by themselves and any benefit to them under the impugned Enactme....
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.... nature of the legislative process and of the society which legislation attempts perennially to re-shape - and it has refused to strike down indiscriminately all legislation embodying classificatory inequality here under consideration. Mr. Justice Holmes, in urging tolerance of under- inclusive classifications, stated that such legislation should not be disturbed by the Court unless it can clearly see that there is no fair reason for the law which would not require with equal force its extension to those whom it leaves untouched." (emphasis supplied) 54. The above was followed by this Court in The Superintendent and Remembrancer of Legal Affairs, West Bengal v. Girish Kumar Navalakha and Ors. (1975) 4 SCC 754 where this Court held that some sacrifice of absolute equality may be required in order that legal system may preserve the flexibility to evolve new solutions to social and economic problems. This Court said: "8. Often times the courts hold that under-inclusion does not deny the equal protection of laws under Article 14. In strict theory, this involves an abandonment of the principle that classification must include all who are similarly situated with respect to the purpo....
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....ned enactment fails, the degree holder Junior Engineers currently working as ad hoc Assistant Engineers are entitled to the relief of regularisation in service, having regard to the fact that they have rendered long years of service as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis for 17 to 18 years in some cases. While it is true that those in service degree holders working as Junior Engineers were not the beneficiaries of the legislation under challenge, the fact remains, that they were eligible for appointment as Assistant Engineers on account of their being degree holders. It is also not in dispute that they were appointed against substantive vacancies in the cadre of Assistant Engineers no matter by utilizing the direct recruit quota. Even in the case of Stipendiary Engineers the vacancies were utilized out of the 67% quota meant for direct recruitment. What is, however, significant is that the utilization of the quota reserved for direct recruitment for appointing Stipendiary and Junior Engineers as Assistant Engineers has not been assailed either before the High Court or before us. On the contrary the contention urged on behalf of Junior Engineers degree holders who are still working ....
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....nt Engineers had not been presently determined by the Government nor were the figures given by the State Government accurate. The number of Junior Engineers who should have got appointed against 5% quota reserved for them would have been large, agreed Mr. Dholakia. To the extent of shortfall the State Government was bound to continue the process of appointment, contended the learned counsel. 59. There is, in our opinion, no merit in the submissions urged by Mr. Dholakia and by learned counsel for some of the interveners. We say so because the quota which the Government resolution proposed to carve out never fructified by a corresponding amendment of the Service Rules. As noticed in the earlier part of this order, the Orissa Public Service Commission was not agreeable to the reservation of a quota for the subordinate engineering service members who held a degree qualification. No such classification was, therefore, made or could be made by the Government, nor was the Government resolution translated into a binding rule that could be enforced by a Court of law. Assuming, therefore, that on a true and proper determination of the posts comprising the cadre strength of Assistant Engine....
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....gally permissible especially when the ad hoc appointments had continued without any interruption till their regularisation. Reliance in support was placed by Mr. Rao upon a Constitution Bench decision of this Court in Direct Recruit Class II Engineering Officers' Association v. State of Maharashtra and Ors. (1990) 2 SCC 715. The case at hand, according to the learned counsel, fell under proposition (B) formulated in the said decision. Grant of seniority from the date of initial appointments did not, therefore, suffer from any constitutional or other infirmity to warrant interference from this Court. 63. Mr. Sisodia appearing for some of the parties, on the other hand, contended that seniority could be granted only from the date of regularisation under the enactment and not earlier. Learned counsel for some of the interveners adopted that contention, including Ms. Aishwarya appearing for some of the diploma holder Junior Engineers and urged that ad hoc service rendered by the Engineers appointed otherwise than in accordance with the rules could not count for the purposes of seniority and that even if Section 3(1) of the Validation Act was held to be valid, Section 3(2) which gave r....
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.... is ad hoc and made as a stop-gap-arrangement in which case officiation in such post cannot be taken into consideration for seniority. Be that as it may, as between proposition A and B the case at hand falls more accurately under proposition B which permits grant of seniority w.e.f. the date the appointees first started officiating followed by the regularisation of their service as in the case at hand. 66. We may also refer to a three-Judge Bench of this Court in Union of India and Anr. etc. etc. v. Lalita S. Rao and Ors. etc. etc. (2001) 5 SCC 384 where doctors appointed by Railway Administration on ad hoc basis had been upon regularisation granted seniority from the date of their ad hoc appointment. This Court held that proposition B stated in Direct Recruits case (supra) permitted such seniority being granted. This Court observed: "Obviously the Court had in mind the principle B evolved by the Constitution Bench in the Direct Recruit Engineering Officers Association case (supra). If the initial appointment had not been made in accordance with the prescribed procedure laid down by the Recruitment Rules, and yet the appointees Medical Officers were allowed to continue in the po....
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....ority among themselves shall be subject to the order of ranking given by the Public Service Commission on the basis of the SQT; (iv) The Government shall prepare a common seniority list of the degree-holders Junior Engineers and the upgraded Junior Engineers on the above lines and that list shall be the basis for all the subsequent promotions. Promotions, if any, already given shall be reviewed and readjusted in accordance with the said seniority list; and (v) The approval of the Public Service Commission inrespect of these appointments and their seniority thus fixed need not be sought at this distance of time." (emphasis supplied) 68. In Narender Chadha & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. (1986) 2 SCC 157, this Court was dealing with a somewhat similar fact situation. The petitioners in that case were not promoted by following the actual procedure prescribed by the relevant Service Rules even though the appointments were made in the name of the President by the competent authority. They had based on such appointments, continuously held the post to which they were appointed and received salary and allowances payable to incumbent of such post. The incumbents were entered in the d....
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....As a matter of fact the Court approved the said decision holding that there was force in the view taken by this Court in that case. This Court observed: "In Narender Chadha v. Union of India the officers were promoted although without following the procedure prescribed under the rules, but they continuously worked for long periods of nearly 15-20 years on the posts without being reverted. The period of their continuous officiation was directed to be counted for seniority as it was held that any other view would be arbitrary and violative of Articles 14 and 16. There is considerable force in this view also. We, therefore, confirm the principle of counting towards seniority the period of continuous officiation following an appointment made in accordance with the rules prescribed for regular substantive appointments in the service." 70. In the light of what we have said above, we do not see any illegality or constitutional infirmity in the provisions of Section 3(2) or 3(3) of the impugned legislation. Having said so, there is no reason why a similar direction regarding the writ-petitioners degree holder Junior Engineers who have been held by us to be entitled to regularisation on ....
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....the interveners also at some length. We, however, do not consider it necessary to enlarge the scope of these proceedings by examining issues that are not directly related to the controversy at hand. Three questions that have primarily engaged our attention in these petitions relate to (a) the validity of the impugned Validation Act. (b) regularization of in-service degree holder Junior Engineers who have been working for considerable length of time as Assistant Engineers on ad hoc basis and (c) the seniority position of those being regularized either under the Validation Act or in terms of the directions being issued by us in these appeals. Other issues which the interveners seek to raise especially issues regarding grant or denial of the benefit of reservation to SC and ST candidates, have not been touched by us in these proceedings for want of proper pleadings on the subject and also for want of any pronouncement by the High Court on the said questions. In the circumstances, this order shall be taken to have settled only what we have specifically dealt with or what would logically follow therefrom. Any question whether the same relates to inter se seniority of those regularized u....