The Supreme Court on Monday refused to pass any interim order on the appeals filed by the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission and others against a Madras High Court judgment setting aside the selection and appointment of 83 out of 91 candidates in Group I services for 2000-2001 for indulging in malpractices.
A Bench of Justice Mukundakam Sharma and Justice Anil R. Dave after hearing senior counsel P.P. Rao for the TNPSC and senior counsel K.V. Viswanathan for the respondent, on whose petition the High Court passed the order, posted the appeals for final hearing on May 4.
The Bench, in a brief order directed the parties to exchange affidavits. When Mr. Rao pointed out that the State was not a party, the Bench directed the Chief Secretary, Tamil Nadu, to be impleaded as a party and issued notice seeking response from the government.
When Mr. Rao pleaded for stay of the impugned judgment dated March 4, this was opposed by Mr. Viswanathan saying that the High Court had considered all aspects.
Justice Sharma told the counsel for the parties, “We don't intend to pass any interim order at this stage. If you have any difficulty, it is open to you to mention for appropriate orders.”
The High Court in its judgment had held that the selection to Group I services should have been made in a transparent and unbiased manner by the TNPSC without giving scope or room for anybody to raise their little finger against such selection. Everything was not well with the selection.
By now, most of the selected candidates would have put in a considerable period of service.
But that did not mean that illegally and improperly appointed candidates should be allowed to continue with their services at the cost of genuine candidates, that too, when such illegal appointments had been questioned from the beginning.
Assailing this judgment, the TNPSC and some of the selected candidates filed special leave petitions raising important questions of law, viz., whether the High Court ought to have considered and decided the objections of the TNPSC to the report of the second Advocate Commissioner relied on by it before accepting his findings; whether the State of Tamil Nadu ought to have been impleaded as a necessary party to the proceedings and what would be the effect of non-impleadment of the State government on the maintainability of the petitions before the High court, whether the High Court failed to notice that the irregularities pointed out by the Advocate Commissioner were unsustainable as he proceeded on a misunderstanding of the instructions and found fault with their selection without jurisdiction.
The SLPs sought quashing of the impugned judgment and an interim stay of its operation.
