Union Of India And Ors vs Union Of India & Anr. Air 1989 1215 ... on 19 August, 2010
8. It is evident that the general rule or principle indicated by the
Supreme Court in the O.P. Gupta (supra) case was that the date of initial
entry into a grade or cadre is to be the determinative point of time for
reckoning seniority. However, the Supreme Court was alive to the fact that
the application of this rule would result in wholesale reversion that such a
consequence might affect the reserved category employees; it was likely to
disturb the ratio between general candidates and those in the reserved
categories. In these circumstances, it directed the respondents to review the
promotion so as to ensure that the reservations in accordance with the
existing roster allocations were maintained. This necessarily implied that
while re-working the seniority for each post, i.e. LDC,UDC and Assistant,
the respondent had to also ensure that reversion of SC candidates could be
resorted to only if the vacancy slots were filled by another identically placed
reserved category candidate.