Summary
After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, TS-Transco cancelled the 2011-12 Sub-Engineer recruitment begun by the erstwhile AP-Transco for the composite State and issued a fresh notification for Telangana. The High Court quashed both the cancellation and the fresh notification and directed appointment of candidates selected in the earlier process. The Supreme Court set this aside: the cancellation was a bona fide policy decision driven by litigation delay, the State's bifurcation and reassessed requirements; the fresh recruitment (different zones, numbers and local-reservation ratio) was not a continuation of the earlier one; legitimate expectation had been met by age relaxation, whose sufficiency is not for judicial review; and Section 79 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 protects only those already appointed, not select-list candidates.
Issues
- Whether TS-Transco's decision of 11.12.2017 to treat the pre-bifurcation recruitment notifications of 2011-12 as lapsed, and to initiate a fresh selection for Sub-Engineers (Electrical) in Telangana, was arbitrary or unreasonable.
- Whether candidates on the select list of the earlier process could insist on appointment, or on being culled out for the zones falling within Telangana.
- Whether the legitimate expectation of the earlier candidates was adequately addressed by age relaxation in the fresh selection, and whether its sufficiency is open to judicial review.
- Whether Section 79 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 conferred any right on select-list candidates to appointment by the successor corporation.
Provisions considered
- Section 79, Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014The Court held that Section 79 protected the vested rights of candidates who had already been appointed before bifurcation (as in an earlier writ petition concerning Junior Assistants and Junior Linemen), but was not available to persons merely on a select list. The High Court had turned the provision on its head by treating it as not barring appointment from the composite-State select list; it cannot be read as an enabling provision vesting a right to appointment or encroaching on the successor corporation's right to decide afresh. (¶¶ 31, 32)
- Article 14, Constitution of IndiaThe High Court had declared the cancellation notification and the fresh recruitment notification illegal, arbitrary and violative of Article 14. The Supreme Court found the cancellation to be a reasoned policy decision supported by the file notings and reversed that conclusion. (¶¶ 13, 21, 22, 23, 33)
Held
- Selected candidates have no vested right to appointment and no mandamus can issue to an employer to appoint from a select list; but a decision not to fill vacancies from the select list must be taken bona fide and for appropriate reasons. (¶ 20)
- The High Court's finding that scrapping the earlier selection was unreasonable rested on an incorrect appreciation of the file notings. Those notings showed a policy decision taken in view of the delay caused by litigation over weightage for in-service candidates, the bifurcation of the State on 02.06.2014 and the review order of 13.10.2017 clarifying that there was no mandamus to proceed with the 2011-12 selection, which together justified a reassessment of human-resource requirements and a new selection; the order of 13.10.2017 was not treated as a mandate to cancel. (¶¶ 21, 22, 23, 30)
- The fresh recruitment could not be construed as a continuation of the 2011-12 process: the earlier notification divided the composite State into six zones, three of which fell in Telangana with 133 posts, whereas the new notification divided Telangana into two zones with 174 posts and altered the local-reservation ratio from 80:20 to 70:30. There was therefore no basis for culling candidates from the earlier select list for the zones that fell in Telangana. (¶¶ 24, 25, 26)
- TS-Transco had taken the legitimate expectation of earlier candidates into account by extending the age limit to 44 years in the new selection, which all the writ petitioners availed of. A court in judicial review cannot second-guess how the authority addresses legitimate expectation; once it is satisfied that the issue was considered and age relaxation given, the sufficiency of that accommodation is outside its domain. (¶¶ 10, 28, 29)
- East Coast Railway v. Mahadeva Apparao was distinguishable: there the ground for cancellation was speculative, whereas here the file notings disclosed intrinsic compulsions prompting cancellation and a fresh notification. (¶ 30)
- Section 79 of the AP Reorganisation Act protects candidates already appointed before bifurcation; it confers no right on persons merely on a select list and cannot be read as an enabling provision displacing the successor corporation's independent decision whether to continue the earlier selection or start afresh. (¶¶ 31, 32)
Result
High Court judgment and order dated 06.03.2020 set aside; TS-Transco free to make appointments under the notification dated 28.12.2017 in accordance with law; the appeals of TS-Transco and AP-Transco allowed; the pending writ petition of the intervenors to be disposed of in light of these observations; the appeal by candidates who failed the written examination under the 2017 notification, seeking clubbing of the earlier vacancies, dismissed; pending applications disposed of.