Common Seniority List of Section Officers

No.4/24/96-CS.I
Government of India
Department of Personnel & Training

New Delhi, dated the 3rd Dec., 1997

OFFICE MIMORANDUM

Sub: Common Seniority List (CSL) of Section Officers.

The undersigned is directed to refer to this Department’s O.M.No.4/24/96-CS.I dated 27.8.97 whereby a draft CSL of Section Officers was prepared in compliance with the Supreme Court’s order dated 9.5.97 in SLPs No.23423-24 of 1996. In the said order of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97 the earlier direction of the CAT, New Delhi, vide their order dated 22.3.95 in OA No.996/1993, 157/1994, 492/1994 and 629/1994 was reversed, to the extent narrated in following para.

1. In the order dated 22.3.95, the CAT, New Delhi, had held inter alia that as there was no specific provision in the CSS Rules for carrying forward of the unfilled vacancies in the direct recruitment quota from year to year during the period prior to 1.7.1984, the vacancies in that quota remaining unfilled were required to be diverted to the other stream i.e. promotee quota during the same recruitment year. Some directly recruited Section Officers, who were applicants in one of the Applications disposed of by the aforesaid order of the CAT, filed SLPs in the Supreme Court against the aforesaid ruling of the CAT. By its order dated 9.5.1997 in the aforecited appeals, the Supreme Court allowed the petitions and set aside the said ruling of the CAT. In the judgement dated 9.5.1997 the Supreme Court also referred to its earlier judgement dated 13.7.1990 whereby it had specifically ordered that the amendment of CSS Rules, bringing about a limiting provision to the system of unlimited carrying forward of unfilled vacancies in any stream from year to year to a period oftwo subsequent recruitment years only, should be made effective from 1.7.934 instead of 1.7.1985, as originally notified. The Supreme Court also observed that the acceptance of the Tribunal that preceding the date of amendment, the Government was devoid of power to carry forward unfilled vacancies of direct recruits and all these vacancies are meant to be thrown open to promotees is misinterpretation of the rules. The Supreme Court, therefore, directed the Government to redo the CSL as per the law thus laid down by it on 9.5.97.

2. In compliance with the aforesaid order of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97, first of all, a draft CSL of Section Officers was prepared and circulated through O.M. of even number dated 27.8.97 inviting objections, if any. The objections which have been received were broadly classified as follows:

(i) Objections relating to the interpretation of the judgement of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97;

(ii) Objections relating to the methodology of preparing the CSL, independent of the judgement of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97; and

(iii) Objections relating to factual errors.

4(i). The main contention of those who objected on account of incorrect interpretation of the judgement of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97 was that while the Supreme Court vide the judgement dated 9.5.97 had overruled the previous ruling of the CAT dated 22.3.95 to the effect that there should be no carrying forward of unfilled vacancies from year to year prior to the year 1984 and that unfilled vacancies in any mode should stand lapsed to the other mode of recruitment in the same year of recruitment, the said judgement of the Supreme Court did not give the direction that carrying forward of unfilled vacancies for the period 1962 to 1984 was without any limitation. In their opinion the Supreme Court in itsjudgement dated 9.5 .97 had meant to convey that, prior to 1984 also, unfilled vacancies in Direct Recruit quota should have been carried forward to two subsequent recruitment years. In other words, according to them, the Supreme Court meant to say that the amendment to CSS Rules, effected in 1984, whereby the power to carry forward unfilled vacancies in any stream was restricted to two subsequent recruitment years, should be given effect right from the inception of the CSS Rules, i.e. 1962 .

The position regarding this objection is that the Supreme Court vide its judgement dated 9.5 .97 has upheld the SLP filed by direct recruit Section Officers. In the SLP the DRs had prayed for staying the operation of the impugned judgement and the order dated 22.3 .1995 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi in Original Application No. 629 of 1994 to the extent it has held that prior to 1.7 .1984 , unfilled vacancies of direct recruits would be diverted to promotees in the very year of the shortfall and order dated 23rd May, 1996 in Rejiew Application No. 273 of 1995 during the pendency of tia above special leave petition. The SLP was upheld by the Supreme Court and it set aside the order of the Tribunal as challenged by the petitioners.

Therefore, all such objections on grounds of incorrect interpretation of the Supreme Court’s order have been found not valid

4(ii) Regarding the objec:tions relating to the general methodology, mainly aris:ng out of inadequate and full data, it was obse/ved that those were all gone into earlier when the draft CII, was circulated and objections invited in pursuance of the CAT’s judgement dated 22.3.1995 were examined. It is a fact that although most of the records were available, some of the records pertaining to the period prior to 1970 and 1974, that were required to prepare a flawless CSL, were notavailable. Therefore, efforts were made at that time to draw up the CSL with 1970 as the base year keeping in view the constraint of non-availability of full records. However, as objections were received at that time also as to why 1970 was taken at the base year the matter was placed before the CAT by the Govt. in a Misc. Petition seeking orders in this regard. The CAT held that nonavailability of full records should not stand in the way of the Government from preparing the CSL from the date it should have been prepared as per the CSS Rules. Therefore, the matter was re-examined and a fairly accurate CSL, with 1962 as the base year, could be prepared with the records and data that were available. This was done and the CSL was issued on 15.5.1996. Therefore, these objections are not new. Moreover, the present exercise of redoing the CSL is in pursuance of the Supreme Court’s judgement dated 9.5.97, in which only on one aspect has the Supreme Court given direction, and that is relating to the carrying forward of unfilled vacancies from year to year for the period prior to 1984. No other aspect of the CSL issued on 15.5.96 was challenged by any party in the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has also not commented on any other aspect of the CSL. Therefore, objections against the CSL on grounds which were not covered by the Supreme Court’s judgement dated 9.5.97, have not been found valid.

4(iii) The third set of objections related to factual errors. Within the ambit of the judgement of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.97, all factual errors (like incorrect date of birth, incorrect spelling of names/surnames, etc., inter-se seniority between one or two persons in any batch, which were rot connected with the general dispute arising out of the rota quota principle) pointed out, were taken note of and corrections made.
5. Thus, after disposing of and attending to some of the relevant objections as mentioned above, the final CSL has been drawn up (copy enclosed). After complying with the Supreme Court’s orders dated 9.5.97 the salientfeatures and the methodology that was finally relied upon in preparing the CSL is mentiored below:-
(i) The CSL has been drawn upon starting from 1.10.1962 – the date from which the CSS Rules, 1962 came into force.
(ii) The Civil List of Section Officers as on 1.10.62, which contains the list of permanent as well as officiating Section Officers of the CSS, has been taken as the starting point. The Section Officers directly recruited upto the recruitment year 1961 are shown is that list. The list also includes all permanent and officiating Section Officers, as on 1.10.1962. The inter-se seniority of permanent SO in this list stood finalised as on the appointed clay, i.e. 1.10.1962 and, therefore, their names have not been brought into the present CSL. The officiating 50 s included in the Civil List and those appointed subsequently under the promotion quota have been interpolated with the direct recruit section Officers appointed after 1961 in accordance with the ratio prescribed under the rules in force during the relevant period.
(iii) To prepare an accurate CSL, information relating to the number of DR officers who joined in various years right from 1962, as well as the particulars of promote officers who were included in the various select lists from 1962 onwards, was necessary. However, as no CSL of SOs was being prepared earlier and promotion to the grade of Under Secretary was Being done by drawing up a common eligibility list of $503 /$ PSs from time to time, the select lists for the 50 s for the earlier periods, which were not considered as permanent records, were not maintained properly. As a result, when this exercise of preparing the CSL right from 1962 was taken up, the select lists of SOs from 1962 to 1969 were not available. The CAT was approachedmentioning this difficulty and suggesting preparation of the CSL from 1970 instead. The CAT by its order dated 29.3.96, however, held that nonavailability of full records cannot be accepted as a justification for not preparing the CSL for the period prior up to 1950. Therefore, the common eligibility lists of SOS, for the relevant period which were available, were made use of in culling out the particulars of the direct recruit officers appointed and promote officers included in the select lists for the period 1962 to 1969.
It may be relevant here to point out that the annual administrative reports were also seen to find out whether information a railable there could be of any use or not. It was found that though the number of direct recruit and promotee Section Officers appointed in various recruitment years was furnished in the same reports, in the annual reports of this Department, the number of vacancies reported for direct recruitment with its break-up into current and backlog elements was not furnished. Consequently, the figures given in the Reports could not be made use of for any further accurate calculation of current vacancies of various years.
(iv) The slots of the p:omotee officers have been restricted to 4 times the number of DR vacancies for the post-1989 period upto the year 1991.
(v) The names of pronotee officers who had retired on superannuation by the time they could be appointed substantivoy/interpolated with the DRs have been dropped from the CSL. For this, as the DRs take normally one year to join from the date their results are derlared, the crucial date has been taken as 1st July of the year after the year in which the results of the Civil Services Examination are declared. For eximple, a direct recruit of 1980 batch has been taker, as substantively joining on 1.7.1981 and, accorcing-ly, on that date, if apromotee officer had already retired, such promotee officer has not been interpolated with such direct recruit officer and, thus, such promotee officer is not included in the CSL, because the CSL is a list of only such officers who are substantively appointed.
(vi) In accordarice with the judgement of the Supreme Court dated 9.5.1997, the unfilled vacancies in DR quota have been allowed to be carried forward from year to year without any limitation till 1983, and accordingly the slots for promotees and direct recruits have undergone a change (compared to the CSL dated $15.5 . \mathrm{~g} 6$, the slots for promotee/DRs which are now calculated for the purpose of this CSL are as under:-

The slots for promotees for the years 1984 to 1991 are as under:-| Year | DR vacancies current | DR varancies in thard year of brocght forward | No. of DR who joined | Slots for St, appointees |
| :–: | :–: | :–: | :–: | :–: |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 1984 | 30 | – | 21 | 120 |
| 1985 | 18 | – | 19 | 72 |
| 1986 | 27 | 24 | 15 | 122 |
| 1987 | 16 | 07 | 18 | 71 |
| 1988 | 20 | – | 25 | 80 |
| 1989 | 23 | $\because$ | 13 | 99 |
| 1990 | 39 | $\because$ | 17 | 156 |
| 1991 | 45 | $\because$ | 18 | 180 |

Figures in colum 2 \& 3 for the years 1963 and 1964 show the tote: number of DRs who joined/ were assigned seniority in these years including ECOs/SSCOs.
*Vigures in column 2 for total DR vacancies have been taken from UPSC’s letter No.F.20/2/95-E.I(B) dated 2.6.1995 and I’ 9,’1/96-E.I(B) dated 4.4.1996.
*Figures in colum 4 for 1974 and onwards have been taken from DR lleg:ster, which gives the number of DRs who joined. I’or 1962-73, their number has been deduced from the relevant eligibility lists prepared for promotion to grade I of CSS as the DR Register or any other authentic document containing the requisite information is not available for this period. The figures for 1973-8: are a little higher (except in 1973 and 1981 when they are equal) than the figures given in the affidavit etc. to the Supreme Court/CAT because that statement was compiled for only 30 out of 33 cadres, whereas the figures above are for 33 cadres, arrived at by applying a correction factor of $33 / 30$.For the period from 1973 onwards, an exercise had been undertaken in 1988 at the time of filing an affidavit before the CAT in Amrit Lal’s case and, after referring to the vacancy rosters of 30 out of 33 cadres, a statement giving the DR vacancies from 1973 to 1984 was included in the affidavit. This statement has been relied upon or drawing up the list. However, since the figures were only for 30 cadres, a correction factor of $33 / 3$ has been applied to these figures. Consequently, the figures against column 3 are marginally higher tha the ones indicated in the affidavit.
*Till 1989, the figures in columns 2, 3 and 4 have been taken from the O.M.No.4/28/92-CS.I dated 29.1.1993 vide which, the earlier CSL was circulated. However, against column 4 for 1988, the records show 25 names whereas the aforesaid O.M. showed 24. The figure of 25 has been adopted. After 1989, the figures in these columns have been taken from the concerned files.
(vii) The inter-se seniority of Direct Recruits (DR) and Departmental Promotees (DPs) has been determined on the basis of their respective quotas, which was 1:5 from 1962 to 1969, 1:5 from 1970 to 9.2 .1982 and 1:4 thereafter.
(viii) Since now the unfilled vacancies for DR quota have been allowed to be carried forward from year to year upto 1983, the slots for promotion from 1962 to 1983 have been calculated as follows:-

From 1962 to 1969 : (Current DR vacancies $\times 3$ )
From 1970 to 1931: (Current DR vacancies $\times 5$ )
For 1982 and 1933: (Current DR vacancies $\times 4$ )(ix) After 1.7.84 till 1.7.91, the unfilled DR vacancies have been carried forward for two years and, in the thifd year, they have been diverted to the promotion quosa. If a DR continues to officiate till thas :ime against an unfilled DR vacancy, he has been deemed to be substantively appointed from that later date and has been interpolated with the DRs as such.
4. DRs upto 1991 CSE have been interpolated with the promotees, ending with $5 . \mathrm{No} .3640$ in the present CSL. The names of 108 promotiee from S.No. 3641 upto 3748 will be bunched against the remaining slots earmarked for them against recruitment year 1991. The names of promotees after that till S.No. 5600 of the list are provisional as the corr:sponding direct recruits are yet to be interpolated as per rules.

To
All Cadre Authorities of CSS.