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Showing contexts for: article 321 in Mangal Sain vs The State Of Punjab And Anr. on 21 May, 1951Matching Fragments
This meaning is not assigned to the expression "State" in Part XIV of the Constitution of India. From this alone it follows that the expression "civil post under a State" does not include the post held by persons in the service of any local authority within the territory of the State.
14. In my judgment the view set out in the preceding para, finds support from Articles 320 and 321 of the Constitution of India. Article 309 'inter alia' makes provision for recruitment and conditions of service of persons serving a State. Articles 315 and 320 deal with the appointment of a Public Service Commission for a State and the functions of that Commission. Article 321 then provides that an Act made by the Legislature of a State may provide for the exercise of additional functions by the State Public Service Commission as respects service of any local authority or other body corporate constituted by law or of any public institution. Clearly, if persons holding posts under a local authority were holding those posts under the "State", there was no necessity for extending the functions of the State Public Service Commission as respects the services of local authority. That being so, in my opinion, Municipal employees do not hold civil posts under the State and are, therefore, not entitled to the protection afforded by Article 311 of the Constitution of India.
30. Mr. Prem's argument was that under Article 311 of the Constitution a man may riot be a member of the Service of the State and yet he may hold civil post under the State and that the Executive Officer is a special officer of the State appointed for the purpose of seeing that a Municipal Committee functions properly. I am not prepared to accept Mr. Prem's argument. Article 311 occurs in Part XIV of the Constitution. Article 308 mentions that in this part, unless the context otherwise requires, the expression "State" means a State specified in Part A or Part B of the First Schedule. The learned Advocate-General drew our attention to Article 12 of the Constitution which occurs in Part III. Article 12 states that in this Part, that is in Part III. unless the context otherwise requires, "the State" includes the Government and Parliament of India and the Government and the Legislature of each of the States and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India. The object of the learned Advocate-General in referring to Article 12 was to show that wherever the Constitution-makers intended the word "State" to include "local authorities" they stated so as they did in Article 12, while in Article 308 "local authority" is not included. Reference may also be made to Article 321 which also occurs in Part XIV. Before I deal with Article 321, I must refer to Article 320. The first clause of Article 320 reads thus :
"It shall be the duty of the Union and the State Public Service Commission to conduct examinations for appointments to the services of the Union and the services of the State respectively."
Article 321 says :
"An Act made by Parliament or, as the case may be, the Legislature of a State may provide for the exercise of additional functions by the Union Public Service Commission or the State Public Service Commission as respects the services of the Union or the State and also as respects the services of any local authority or other body corporate constituted by law or of any public institution."
It is obvious from a comparison of Articles 320 and 321 that the Public Service Commission deals with appointments to services of the Union or the State only and not with appointments to services of any local authority or other body corporate constituted by law or of any public institution. The functions of the Public Service Commission can be extended and they may be asked to deal with services of local bodies, etc., but normally they deal with the services of the Union or the State. If in Article 311 it was intend-ed to give members of the civil services of a local authority or persons holding posts under the local authority the same protection as was given to members of the Civil Services of the Union or of the State or to holders of civil posts under the Union or State, the framers of the Constitution would have said so. But they did not. The omission is significant and I must therefore hold that members of the civil services of a local authority or persons holding posts under a local authority have not the same rights and privileges as are given to the persons mentioned in Article 311 of the Constitution.