IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA CWJC No.11639 of 2002 1.SHYAM LAL RAM son of late Chilagu Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in Shri Chand High School, Kurzi, Patna. 2.Pradeep Kumar Ram, son of late Satya Narayan Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in Nehru Seva Sadan High School, Porani, Sasaram, District-Rohtas. 3.Jagdhar Prasad son of late Jigodhan Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in S.S.D. High School, Balua, Bhojpur. 4.Fulchand Ram son of Shri Bangali Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in S.S. High School, Jagdishpur, Bhojpur, Ara. 5.Jawahar Lal Ram son of late Khedu Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in Baldeo Inter College, Danapur, Patna. 6.Deo Muni Ram son of late Sheo Bihari Ram, at present posted as Assistant Teacher in Mahesh High School, Anisabad, Patna. Versus 1.THE STATE OF BIHAR through its Secretary, Department of Primary, Secondary and Adult Education, New Secretariat Building, Patna. 2.The Secretary, Government of Bihar, Department of Finance, Secretariat Building, Patna. 3.The Director, Secondary Education, Bihar, Amrapali Bhawan, Bailey Road, Patna. 4.The District Education Officer, Patna. 5.The District Education Officer, Bhojpur, Ara. 6.The District Education Officer, Rohtas, Sasaram. ----------- 4 06.07.2010 Heard counsel for the petitioners and counsel for the State. Prayer of the petitioners in this writ application reads as follows:- “(i)To command the Respondents and order them to count the seniority of petitioners from date of their respective appointment and further to include the names of petitioners in State wise seniority list for Assistant Teachers belonging to SC/ST category of nationalized High School. (ii)To hold and declare that petitioners are entitled for senior scale of Rs.6500-10500 as they have served for more than twenty years in service in nationalized High School. (iii)To order Respondents to grant scale of Rs. 6500-10500 to petitioners having treated them to be eligible for the same as juniors to them have been accorded the scale aforesaid.” 2 Counsel for the petitioners, while pressing for the aforementioned relief, has taken a very limited stand that when the petitioners under initial appointment as untrained teachers were allowed to undergo and complete the required statutory qualification of teachers training course for holding the post of teacher and they had also passed such examination of teachers training while continuing in service, their seniority has to be dated back from their first entry in service. To that extent Mr. Priyardarshi, learned counsel for the petitioners had sought to seek support from some of the cited example given in paragraph 14 of the writ application with regard to the counter part similarly situated teachers belonging to the scheduled caste candidates. Counsel for the State as usual would submit that he has no instructions and therefore could not file an appropriate counter affidavit. The counter affidavit which has been filed by him is infact of no use as it does not answer the specific plea of discrimination of the petitioners as mentioned in paragraph 14 of the writ application. As a matter of fact, this Court by order dated 28.6.2010 noticing such discrepancies in the counter affidavit had given one more indulgence to the respondents to explain this aspect. Unfortunately, no supplementary counter affidavit has been filed by the respondents to explain paragraph 14 of the writ application which reads as follows:- “That it is stated here that juniors to petitioners who were not trained at the time of appointment have found place in list contained in Annexure-3 of this application. Such persons are finding their names at Serial no.31 (Jagjivan 3 Ram), Sl. No.52 (Sanchit Baitha), Sl. NO.99 (Ram Chandra Ram) and Sl. NO.156 (Vishwanath Paswan). It is pertinent to add here that in terms of appointment all the teachers appearing in the list are junior to petitioner no. 6 and except up to Sl. No.2, all are junior to petitioner no.1. The petitioner nos. 2 to 5 are senior in term of appointment except a few i.e, up to Serial no. 18. Hence their names should also have appeared in the list once they had passed the B.Ed. examination in course of time.” Learned counsel for the petitioners, however, would submit that for holding the qualification of being trained is the statutory qualification and therefore any relaxation given to the candidates of scheduled castes at the time of initial appointment to be appointed as untrained teacher would not be clothed them with the right of substantive appointment in the cadre unless they have completed the statutory qualification. It is not in doubt that other petitioners leaving petitioner no.1 were appointed as untrained teachers and therefore their seniority can only be reckoned from the date they had completed the required qualification of training. The plea of discrimination having been not answered, this Court in a normal circumstances could have allowed the prayer of the petitioners for giving them the same benefit, but then as it is well settled that one wrong cannot be allowed to be perpetuated by the writ Court by committing another wrong and therefore there being no explanation of the case as made out in paragraph 14 of the writ application, this Court would only hold that if the persons named in paragraph 14 of the writ application have been allowed such benefit, their seniority also has to be 4 redrawn as per rules. In other words, their seniority will be counted from the date they had acquired qualification for the post of teacher after completing the training. With the aforementioned observations/directions this application is disposed of. Abhay Kumar ( Mihir Kumar Jha, J.)