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6. While so, yet another Writ Petition by way of Public Interest Litigation was filed by the Tamil Nadu Graduate Engineers Association in W.P.No.11754/2002 challenging B.P.(FB) No.59 under which the Board withdrew the conduct of examination for internal selection. Interim stay was granted in the said Writ Petition. Thus, till April, 2002, the Board was virtually disabled from going ahead with the internal selection to fill up the posts of Assistant Engineers by means of internal selection from and among the employees. But the Board could complete the process of selection and appointment for direct recruitment as against the quota for the direct recruits.

7. On 13.4.2002, the interim stay granted in W.P.No.11754 of 2002 was vacated. However, another Writ Petition was filed in W.P.No.1602/2002 by some other person. But the same was dismissed as withdrawn on 8.5.2002 itself. Thereafter, the Board undertook the internal selection process and completed the same during the month of May, 2002. Accordingly, the petitioners in all these Writ Petitions were all appointed as A.Es. by means of such internal selection process during the month of May, 2002.

33. In the cases on hand, strictly in accordance with the Annexure to the Service Regulations, the Board rightly commenced the process to appoint both the in-service candidates as well as the direct recruits during the calendar year 2000. As pointed out by Mr.V.Prakash, the learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioners, had the selection process been completed for both the categories during the calendar year 2000, surely, many of the service candidates would have been seniors to the direct recruits as per the quota of 1 : 1 ratio provided in proviso to Regulation 97 of the Service Regulations. Unfortunately, because of the various impediments about which I have already narrated, the in-service candidates could not get selected and appointed during the year 2000 so as to get the seniority of the year 2000. For this, the in-service candidates are also to be blamed to some extent. It is they who had approached this Court and got an order of stay of such process of internal selection alone without requesting the court to stay the process of direct recruitment also in view of the fact that ratio of 1 : 1 is a method of selection. It is not as though all such eligible in-service candidates had approached this Court by filing the earlier litigations. Only a select group of people approached this Court and got the entire process stalled. As a result, those in-service candidates who were willing to participate in the examination and those who were hopeful of getting through the examination also could not get selected during the calendar year 2000 and thus they have also been deprived of their quota of the year 2000 for no fault of theirs.