The Supreme Court has said that a candidate, selected in Civil Services examinations, cannot claim allocation of cadre of his choice as a matter of right.
A selected candidate has a right to be considered for appointment to the IAS but he or she has no such right to be allocated to a cadre of his choice or to his home state, a bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and V Ramasubramaian said.
“Allotment of cadre is an incidence of service. The applicant as a candidate for the All-India Service with eyes wide open has opted to serve anywhere in the country. Once an applicant gets selected to service, the scramble for the home cadre starts," the bench pointed out.
The top court noted that procedure for allocation of cadre is mechanical and admits no exception save for certain rules. The state has no discretion on allocation of a cadre at its whims and fancies, it added.
The court allowed an appeal by the Union government against the Kerala High Court in 2017, which directed the Centre to change cadre of IAS officer A Shainamol from Himachal Pradesh to Kerala.
It said the High Court had exceeded its jurisdiction to order allocation of Kerala cadre to the officer without examining the policy decision of the Union government. The HC's view that there was no consultation with Kerala before allocating the cadre was not acceptable, the court said, adding it is a fallacy that consultation has to be held with state to whom the officer is to be allocated, not with the state with whom officers claim allocation.
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(Published 23 October 2021, 14:23 IST)
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