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2. Since common question of law and facts arise in these writ petitions, therefore, both these petitions were taken up together for

3. rt hearing and are being disposed of by common judgment.

For the sake of convenience and also taking into consideration that the pleadings are more elaborate in CWP No. 745 of 2015, we treated it as the lead case.

4. The petitioners are working as System Officers and System Assistants in the different Courts throughout the State of Himachal Pradesh. They have sought quashing of advertisement issued on 10.12.2014 calling for appointment to the posts of Computer Programmer and Assistant Programmer and have further sought modification of the service Rules for the posts of Computer Programmer and Assistant Programmer seeking incorporation of a provision therein for absorption of the existing incumbents holding the posts of System Officers and System Assistants in consonance with the provisions made in the "National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information Technology in the Indian Judiciary prepared by E-Committee of the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India.

High Court. It was also mentioned in the communication that NIC would no longer be the nodal agency. A decision was also taken that it would be the High Court which would now be paying salary of the deployed technical manpower i.e. the petitioners.

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8. On 19.7.2014, an office order was issued by the High Court, wherein it was decided and ordered that after 1.4.2014, the rt control of technical manpower working in the computerized project, would be under the High Court and District and Sessions Judges of the respective Courts. In the meanwhile, the High Court in terms of the directions issued by the Hon'ble Supreme Court, requested the Government to create vacancies for the purpose of computerization of the entire system. After prolonged correspondence, 37 posts of System Officers/System Assistants and one Senior System Officer were proposed to be created and finally the Government agreed to create only one post of Computer Programmer and 12 posts of Assistant Programmers, which were duly advertised on 10.12.2014 and the same has been assailed by the petitioners on number of grounds taken in the writ petitions.

9. The respondents No. 1 and 2 i.e. Principal Secretary (Personnel) and Secretary (Home) in their joint reply have submitted that proposal was received from the High Court for creation of 37 posts of different categories which was examined by the Secretary (Home) in consultation with the I.T. and Finance Departments and after obtaining approval of the competent authority, one post of Computer Programmer was created for High Court Registry and 12 posts of Assistant Programmers, were created for the registry of the High Court .

at the rate of one each for District and Sessions Divisions in Himachal Pradesh. It was further averred that instead of the posts of Senior System Officer, System Officer and System Assistants, the posts of Computer Programmer and Assistant Programmers were created for of the reason that the State does not have equivalent posts in Government Departments. It was after consulting the Department of rt Information Technology and Finance Department that the posts of Computer Programmer and Assistant Programmers were created.