HC dismisses appeal over APRO appointments

Madras High Court has upheld a single judge's order directing authorities to consider appointment of two persons as Assistant Public Relations Officers (APROs) in government service as it flayed the methodology of recruitment to the posts.
Dismissing appeals filed by the Information and Tourism Secretary and Director of Information and Public Relations department, a division bench comrising Chief Justice S K Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan imposed a cost of Rs 2,500 each on them to be paid to A K Perumal and K Thangaraju, the petitioners before the single judge.
"The appeal grounds show that there were almost 30 posts to be filled and those posts have been filled from time to time only by relaxing the rules. This is hardly an appropriate methodology of recruitment by repeatedly relaxing the rules for direct recruitment, while the persons eligible under the rules languish," the bench observed.

It held that the direction of the single judge to consider the appointment of Perumal and Thangaraju cannot be faulted and the appeals were completely devoid of merits.
Perumal and Thangaraju had challenged the appointment of six persons as APROs (Publicity) in 1999 and seeking a direction to appoint them as APROs.
A single judge had on August 24, 2009 opined that the process of recruitment was irregular, but since considerable time had passed, it would not be appropriate to disturb the persons so appointed.
However, he had directed the authorities to consider the cases of the petitioners for appointment as APROs in available vacancies.