Impleadment Of Few Affected Employees Sufficient In Service Matters; Non-Joining Of All Parties Not Fatal: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has observed that in matters relating to service jurisprudence it is not essential to implead each and everyone who could be affected but if a section of such affected employees is impleaded then the interest of all is represented and protected.The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Vikram Nath and BV Nagarathna in the present matter was considering civil appeals against the Allahabad High Court's order dated December 4, 2019.The High Court while allowing the appeal against the order of Single Judge had observed that there was extraordinary delay on the part of the writ petitioners in approaching the Court in as much as the seniority list of 2006 which had formed the basis of the 2009 seniority list, was not challenged within a reasonable time.The Single Judge had set aside the final seniority list and had directed the appointing authority for preparation of fresh seniority list in accordance with Uttar Pradesh Government Servants Seniority Rules, 1991, be it Rule 5 or Rule 8 thereof.While allowing the appeals, the Supreme Court noted in the instant case Ajay Kumar Shukla And Others V. Arvind Rai And Others :"In matters relating to service jurisprudence, time and again it has been held that it is not essential to implead each and every one who could be affected but if a section of such affected employees is impleaded then the interest of all is represented and protected. In view of the above, it is well settled that impleadment of a few of the affected employees would be sufficient compliance of the principle of joinder of parties and they could defend the interest of all affected persons in their representative capacity. Non-joining of all the parties cannot be held to be fatal."Factual Matrix The Chief Engineer, Department of Minor Irrigation send a requisition dated June 18, 1998 to the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission ("Commission") requesting for recruiting 206 posts of Junior Engineers in the Department of Minor Irrigation which were divided between agriculture, mechanical and civil streams in the ratio of 50:30:20 respectively.The Commission issued an Advertisement No 3 of 1998-1999 for inviting applications for the post of Junior Engineers and after finalizing the results, the Commission forwarded three separate select lists to the Minor Irrigation Department of the State Government. Based upon the three select lists forwarded by the Commission the appointment letter was issued on October 8, 2001, which clearly indicated that the issue regarding seniority would be decided later on.A tentative seniority list was published in 2006 vide office order dated March 17, 2006 with respect to all the Junior Engineers appointed after January 1, 1989 and by office order dated September 5, 2006 published a final seniority list. In 2009, the Department took a fresh exercise of preparing the seniority list as the Rules relating to Junior Engineers were framed by the Minor Irrigation Department for the first time.Accordingly pursuant to publication of a provisional seniority list objections were invited by order dated December 29,2009 and thus on March 5, 2010 a final seniority list was published.Paragraph 11 of the office order dated March 5, 2010 had referred that the Commission had sent three separate lists i.e. of Agricultural stream on September 28, 1999, Mechanical stream on January 6, 2000 and Civil stream on November 7, 2000 and the candidates of the three lists were placed by the Department in the same sequence as they were received with their inter se seniority in their respective lists. Since the appellants (belonging to mechanical and civil stream) came to know of the mode of preparation of the seniority list after the publication of the final list on March 3, 2010 they approached the High Court after no heed was paid to their representations for correcting the seniority list, by considering the inter se merit of all the three streams i.e. Agricultural, Mechanical and Civil on the basis of the marks obtained in their examinations . They argued that they were under the bona fide belief that the department had prepared a seniority list inter se between all three streams as per the selection and result conveyed by the Commission. Although the Single Judge of the Allahabad High Court on May 14, 2019 allowed the writ but on preference of an intra court appeal by the respondents (Agriculture Stream), the Division Bench of the High Court on December 4, 2019 dismissed the same. The Division Bench while dismissing the writ had observed that there was extraordinary delay on the part of the writ petitioners in approaching the Court in as much as the seniority list of 2006 which had formed the basis of the 2009 seniority list, was not challenged within a reasonable time. The High Court had further observed that all the affected Junior Engineers having not been impleaded would be fatal on the principle of non-joinder of necessary parties. It was also opined that the appellants having...

Impleadment Of Few Affected Employees Sufficient In Service Matters; Non-Joining Of All Parties Not Fatal: Supreme Court

Shruti Kakkar

"It is not essential to implead each and every one who could be affected but if a section of such affected employees is impleaded then the interest of all is represented and protected".

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