Plea in Madras High Court seeks quota in law officers’ appointment

Justice M Duraiswamy, before whom the petition moved by Advocate V. Elangovan came up for hearing on Thursday, directed the Additional Advocate General C Manishankar to file a reply and posted the case for further hearing to August 20.

The petitioner Elangovan while referring to the notification calling for applications to fill up 66 posts including that of Special Government Pleaders, Additional Government Pleaders, Additional Public Prosecutors, Government Advocates for Criminal and Civil sides and Government Advocates for Taxes, said the notification suffers owing to its failure to adhere to the existing government orders on reservation of seats for backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

Stating that based on the recommendation of the Sattanathan Commission, the then DMK Government had increased the reservation as 31% for BC’s and 18% for Sc/ST’s and a government order was also passed to the above effect, the petitioner submitted that in 1994 the Government increased it to 69%.

He further noted that based on this, the government ought to have reserved 69 per cent of the posts for BC, MBC, de-notified classes, SC and ST and hence the notification must be struck down for not following the above reservation policy in calling the applications.