therefore, the petitioners have been denied their valuable right to get promotion. Further, the main contention of the petitioners is that similarly placed person viz., S.Yuvaraj filed W.P.No.14595 of 2009, challenging the fixation of seniority in the cadre of Assistant by adopting the date of adoption and based on the order passed therein, he has been placed above two persons, who are juniors to him. Therefore, the same benefit has to be extended to the other similarly placed persons. In this connection, they relied upon the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court rendered in the case of Viman Vaman Awale, (cited supra) wherein, it has been held that, when a particular set of employees is given relief by the Court, all other identically situated persons need to be treated alike by extending the similar benefit. Therefore, the petitioners would contend that benefit has to accrue to them. Whereas, in the counter affidavit filed by the official respondents, it has been stated that the petitioners, are employees of Survey Department, and they have been obsorbed into Rural Development Department, at a later point of time. When regularization of service of such candidates are pending, the petitioners have been interchanged to the post of Junior Assistant/Cashier/Rural Welfare Officer Grade II of Rural Development Department, without verification of their parental service. As rightly pointed out when publication of Assistant cadre seniority was considered during the year 2009, subsequent publication was made only on 30.01.2003. These petitioners, having enjoyed the service benefits for all these 12 or 13 years, as the case may be, can they be placed in similar situation is the first question that has to be answered. In the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in (State of Uttar Pradesh and others vs. Arvind Kumar Srivatsava and others) reported in (2015) 1 Supreme Court Cases 347 , it has been categorically held that as follows:18. Both these judgments, along with some other judgments, were take note of in U.P. Jal Nigam & Anr. v. Jaswant Singh & Anr. That was a case where the issue pertained to entitlement of the employees of U.P. Jal Nigam to continue in service up to the age of 60 years. In Harwindra Kumar v. Chief Engineer, Karmik this Court had earlier held that these employees were in fact entitled to continue in service up to the age of 60 years. After the aforesaid decision, a spat of writ petitions came to be filed in the High Court by those who had retired long back. The question that arose for consideration was as to whether the employees who did not wake up to challenge their retirement orders, and accepted the same, and had collected their post retirement benefits as well, could be given relief in the light of the decision delivered in Harwindra Kumar (supra). The Court refused to extend the benefit applying the principle of delay and laches. It was held that an important factor in https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/hcservices/ exercise of discretionary relief under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is laches and delay. When a person who is not vigilant of his rights and
