Lucknow: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has quashed the termination of 26 general category junior engineers recruited by the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam in 2013, holding that employees cannot be made to suffer for mistakes committed by authorities during the recruitment process.Justice Irshad Ali, while allowing separate petitions filed by junior engineer Rakesh Pratap Singh and 25 others, observed that the petitioners had been appointed by the competent authority through a regular selection process and that no allegation of fraud had been made against them.The court held that while implementation of the reservation policy is mandatory, authorities cannot adopt a procedure contrary to law or disturb a completed selection process in the name of correcting reservation-related irregularities.The bench also quashed the State Backward Classes Commission’s Jan 28, 2014 order, holding that it had been passed without jurisdiction.The case stems from Jal Nigam’s 2013 recruitment drive for 470 junior engineer posts. The selection was conducted category-wise, following which objections were raised regarding the selection of some reserved-category candidates. On Jan 7, 2014, the Jal Nigam managing director constituted a three-member committee to examine the alleged irregularities.Senior advocate Upendra Nath Mishra, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that the committee, in its Jan 15, 2014 report, recommended accommodating eligible reserved-category candidates who had been left out against 469 vacancies available in the second phase. The committee also recommended that no selected general-category candidate be removed.The authorities accepted the recommendation and appointed 136 additional SC/OBC candidates, taking the total number of appointments to 543. According to the petitioners, these candidates were accommodated against available vacancies.However, on Dec 2, 2014, the services of 73 general-category junior engineers, including Singh, were terminated. The affected employees moved HC, which on Dec 18, 2014 quashed the termination orders.In its latest judgment, the court noted that the 2014 order had never been challenged before a higher court and had therefore attained finality, making it binding on Jal Nigam.Allowing the petitions, the court directed that the petitioners be allowed to continue in service and granted them continuity of service from their original date of appointment, October 21, 2013.
