Chennai: As per the case, originally, some of the employees belonging to the Revenue Department, Registration Department and the Commercial Taxes Department, approached the then Tamil Nadu Administrative Tribunal questioning the Government’s decision in applying reservation for appointments made by transfer on the ground that such appointments must be construed as a promotion and therefore, no rule of reservation ought to be followed.

While the Tribunal and a division bench of this court held that even though appointments like Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, Sub-Registrar Grade-II and Deputy Tahsildar are done by transfer, it actually amounts to promotion in rank, status and also higher emoluments. Therefore, appointment by transfer of service actually amounts to promotion and hence the rule of reservation can never be applied. The was subjected to a challenge wherein the Supreme Court set aside the division bench’s order. In pursuance to this, government through the impugned GO has initiated measures to redraw temporary panel of Deputy Tahsildar from the year 2004-2018 by providing the rule of reservation to the Backward class and Most Backward class/DNC candidates along with Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates as per rules. Based on this, Justice N Anand Venkatesh while junking pleas challenging the GO said “The impugned GO and the govt letter does not give any retrospective effect to a new rule or an amended rule and it only implements an existing rule which provides for benefit of reservation to those persons belonging to the BCs and MBCs.”