PETITIONER: ALL INDIA EX-EC OFFRS.& SC OFFRS. WELFARE ASSN. Vs. RESPONDENT: UNION OF INDIA DATE OF JUDGMENT20/09/1994 BENCH: HANSARIA B.L. (J) BENCH: HANSARIA B.L. (J) KULDIP SINGH (J) CITATION: 1995 SCC Supl. (1) 78 JT 1994 (6) 265 1994 SCALE (4)255 ACT: HEADNOTE: JUDGMENT:
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by
B.L. HANSARIA, J.- The Released Emergency Commissioned
Officers and Short Service Commissioned Officers
(Reservation of Vacancies) Rules, 1971 (for short ‘the
Rules’) came to be framed by the President of India to
compensate the emergency commissioned officers for the
chances they had lost by entering public services during the
time the country needed them. The Rules apply to those who
were commissioned after 1-1 1-1962 but before 10-1-1968 and
make certain percentage of reservation in all Central Civil
Services and their seniority, on entering these services, is
determined on the assumption that they entered the same “at
the first opportunity they had after joining the training
prior to their Commission or the date of their Commission”.
The prayer of the All India ex-Emergency Commissioned
Officers and Short Service Commissioned Officers’ Welfare
Association and other petitioners is that the same benefit
should be made available to these categories of persons when
they join the non-reserved posts also.
2. Shri Kapoor who addressed us on behalf of the aforesaid
Association has strenuously contended that as the object
behind the framing of the Rules was to compensate for the
lost opportunity there is no rational basis in classifying
the aforesaid officers in two categories holders of
reserved posts and nonreserved posts. According to the
learned counsel, such a classification is hit by Article 14
on the well-accepted principle that a classification to pass
the test of this Article is not only to be founded on
intelligible differentia, but the same must also have a
rational relation to the object sought to be achieved i.e.
there must be a nexus between the basis of classification
and the object behind the same.
3. There can be no quarrel with the aforesaid legal
proposition; it has become well entrenched by now. We do
not, however, view this matter as one of classifying the
aforesaid ex-servicemen in two categories mentioned by Shri
Kapoor. According to us, a policy decision was taken to give
some benefit to those servicemen who had stood with the
people when the country was invaded and had rendered useful
service during the emergency in question. How much benefit
and in what shape it ought to have been given are not
matters on which courts can have any say, these are
exclusively for the executive to decide. The courts come
into picture in such policy matters if the same be either
illegal or irrational or were to suffer from procedural
impropriety, as reiterated recently by this Court in Tata
Cellular v. Union of India’. We do not find any such
infirmity in the policy at hand.
4. This is not all. As the recruitment for the reserved post
is through separate method, as stated in para 6(b) of the
reply filed on behalf of Respondents 1 and 2 to Writ
Petition No. 151 of 1989, there is no possibility of some
of the released officers obtaining reserved posts with the
benefit available under the Rules, and others obtaining
non-reserved posts with no benefit visualised by the Rules.
So the two types of incumbents have to be taken as belonging
to two different categories; the one having no clash of
interest with the other; the one being denied no
benefit available to the other.
1 (1994) 6 SCC 651 : JT (1994) 4 SC 532
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5.In view of the aforesaid, we are not in a position to
concede the prayer made in these petitions. They are,
therefore, dismissed. We leave the parties to bear their
own costs.
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