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HONBLE MR. JUSTICE S.D.ANAND, MEMBER(J):-

1. There being a conceded and apparent as well, commonness of the law point for adjudication in these OAs, we assume authorization to record a joint finding.
2. The principle, broad in character, requiring adjudication is the applicability or otherwise of the Catch up Rule to promotions in the light of the 85th amendment of the Constitution of India, in the absence of an exercise on the part of the governmental dispensation concerned to obtain identifiable data which was mandated by the Honble Apex Judicial Dispensation in M. Nagraj and others Vs. Union of India [2007(4) SCT 664].
3. The identical character of the point of law under adjudication notwithstanding, it requires to be indicated that OAs No. 404, 405, 406, 489 and 361 have been filed by the employees belonging to Lab Technician Dispensation; while the applicants in the other OAs are members of the nursing segment of the relevant medical dispensation.
4. The applicants in all these OAs are General Category employees; while the private respondents are from the Reserved Category. It is the latter category of employees who earned accelerated promotions in the relevant dispensation. Though the General Category employees too came to earn a similar promotion thereafter, the benefit of Catch up Rule came to be denied to them in the light of the 85th Constitutional Amendment. The denial proceeded on the premise that the retention of accelerated seniority was validated by the amendment aforementioned.
13. The view aforementioned came to be affirmed in Union of India vs. Virpal Singh Chauhan etc.: 1995(4) SCT 695 (decided on 10.10.1995) wherein it was reiterated that reservation in promotions is not warranted by Article 16(4)(A) of the Constitution of India.
14. The Constitution (77th) Amendment Act 1995 came into being thereafter w.e.f. 17.6.1995. All that it provided was that nothing contained in Article 16 of Constitution of India shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which was not adequately represented in the services under the State. It was further thereafter that the 85th amendment came into being (w.e.f. 17.6.1995) and added clause 4A to Article 16 of the Constitution of India. That clause 4A is extracted hereunder:-
20. It would be apparent, from a perusal of the judgements in Indra Sawhneys case, Virpal Singh Chauhans case, M.Nagraj case and Suraj Bhan Meena (supra), that though the Court did uphold the constitutionality of the 85th Amendment, it did not mince words in announcing that the denial of Catch up Rule could validly come about only if the relevant dispensation had undertaken an appropriate survey on the quantifiable data regarding the adequacy of representation and had recorded a conscious finding on the basis thereof that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes .are not adequately represented in the services under the State. That the Union of India had not undertaken such an exercise, was held by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on point of fact, in Lacchmi Narayan Gupta & Others Vs. Union of India (CWP 13218 of 2009) decided on 15.7.2011. The fact that PGI, though autonomous in character, is governed by the Govt. of India instructions, cannot be controverted. For facility of reference, we would extract hereunder paras 17 & 18 of the Judgement recorded in 308/CH/2010, 870/CH/2011, 1089/CH/2011 & 921/CH/2011:-