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17. In Paragraph 12 of UP State Road Transport Corporation (supra), the Supreme Court had laid down as follows:

"12. In the background of what has been noted above, we state that the following would be kept in mind while dealing with the claim of trainees to get employment after successful completion of their training:-

(1)Other things being equal, a trained apprentice should be given preference over direct recruits.

(2)For this, a trainee would not be required to get his name sponsored by any employment exchange. The decision of this Court in Union of India. v. Hargopal, AIR 1987 SC 1227, would permit this.

(3)If age bar would come in the way of the trainee, the same would be relaxed in accordance with what is stated in this regard, if any, in the concerned service rule. If the service rule be silent on this aspect, relaxation to the extent of the period for which the apprentice had undergone training would be given.

(4) The concerned training institute would maintain a list of the persons trained year wise. The persons trained earlier would be treated as senior to the persons trained later. In between the trained apprentices, preference shall be given to those who are senior."

18. The expression "other things being equal", as appearing in UP State Road Transport Corporation (supra), was considered by the Supreme Court in Public Service Commission Uttaranchal (supra). The Supreme Court observed that only natural meaning of the aforesaid phrase is that all the candidates must have been subjected to the same selection process and that their inter-se merit is determined on the same criteria. It was further observed that in UP State Road Transport Corporation (supra), direction was issued only to give preference to the trained apprentices over direct recruits and that no direction was given in the said judgment as to how the preference is to be given leaving it entirely to the discretion of the Government to make necessary provision in the statutory Rules. In the aforesaid case, no preference was given to the trained apprentices in the selection process which was governed by a set of Rules framed in 2001 and such being the position, the Supreme Court had held that no vested right had accrued to the trained candidates under the 2001 Rules to the extra 10 marks which were to be added to the trained apprentices under a set of Rules which was framed in the year 2003.

21. Naturally, to determine whether a candidate has qualified in the written test or not, a cut-off mark had to be fixed and in the instant case, such cut-off mark was fixed, as noted earlier. The petitioner did not get the minimum cut-off marks in each of the posts for which he had submitted his application. It is not the case of the petitioner that his contract of apprenticeship contains any stipulation that the respondents would offer him employment after completion of training.

22. In the instant case, the admitted position is that the petitioner has not qualified in the written test and therefore, he could not be put at par with other candidates who had cleared the written test and proceeded further in the interview process. If the petitioner was at par with other candidates, then the question of preference may have arisen. This situation did not arise in the present fact situation as the petitioner had failed to clear the written test and had not progressed further in the selection process. However, it is noticed that in the Regulations there is no provision for giving of preference to apprentices. Having regard to the decision in UP State Road Transport Corporation (supra), the respondents may take appropriate steps in this direction.