In Brief
The Supreme Court dismissed appeals by three groups of course-completed apprentices who were not recruited as 'fresh face substitutes' in Railway Group-D posts in Bikaner Division because they had not trained with the Railways. The Court affirmed that limiting recruitment exclusively to Railway-trained apprentices violates the constitutional guarantees of equality (Articles 14 and 16). While preference may be given to trained apprentices if equally qualified, an absolute exclusion is unconstitutional. The Court did not grant continued employment but directed the Railways to provide age relaxation matching years of service, enabling the appellants to compete in fresh regular recruitment processes on equal terms. Intervenor applications were dismissed.
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