JUDGMENT W. Brome, J. - This writ petition filed by Parkash Chandra Dubey Claims Tracer in the employ of the Northern Railway, challenges the seniority lists issued from the office of the General Manager of the Railway on 27-8-1963 and 2-3-1964, fixing the seniority of the petitioner on the basis of his original date of recruitment to the railway service. 2. The petitioner was employed in the year 1943 as an office clerk in the office of the Chief Commercial Superintendent of the East Indian Railway, but the section in which he was employed was allotted in the year 1952 to the zone covered by the Northern Railway. The Claims Tracers employed in the Claims Section of the railway were recruited from different sources, viz. from Commercial Clerks working on the line and from the clerical staff of the Chief Superintendent's Office. At first they were appointed on the basis of special selection, but later on were recruited merely on the basis of seniority-cum-suitability. The seniority of these various recruits used to be calculated with reference to the date of their appointment in the cadre of Claims Tracers; but the impugned seniority list issued in 1963 and 1964 have introduced a distinction, with the result that earlier recruits will be entitled to claim seniority on the basis of their date of appointment in the Cl time Tracers' cadre, while later recruits will have their seniority allotted on the basis of the date of their original appointment as clerks in the railway. The petitioner was appointed as Claims Tracer in 1957, consequently his seniority has been shown in the impugned lists with reference to the date his Original appointment as clerk i.e. 1943. 3. Mr. Khare, who appears for the petitioner, has made the following two submissions : (1) That the natural criterion for fixing seniority is the date of appointment to the particular cadre in question; and the authorities had no justification for departing from this principle in the case of the petitioner, in the absence of any statutory rule authorising such departure. (2) The introduction of different criteria for calculating seniority in the case of persons recruited earlier and in the case of those recruited later involves unfair and discrimination and infringes Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. 4. (2) The introduction of different criteria for calculating seniority in the case of persons recruited earlier and in the case of those recruited later involves unfair and discrimination and infringes Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. 4. The first line of argument adopted by learned counsel for he petitioner is based on the assumption that there was no statutory rule entitling the railway authorities to fix seniority on the basis of my criteria other then than that of the date of entry into the particular cadre. Rule 10 of the Rules Governing the promotion of Subordinate Staff, given in Appendix IIA of the Indian Railway Establishment Code (Vol-I, shows however, that "the seniority of subordinate staff shall shall be determined in accordance with the rules prescribed by the General Manager or the Chief Mining Engineer." This means that the General Manager had the power to fix seniority and to lay down the principles on which seniority was to be calculated, And in the circumstances it is not possible to argue that he had no power to fix seniority on the basis of the initial date of recruitment of the railway service. 5. Now we come to the second contention, namely alleged infringement of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. According to. the averments in para 42 of the petition, seniority has been calculated, in the case of those who were appointed on the basis of selection in the year 1952 and ai,o in the case of those who were recruited in the year 1956, on the basis of the date of appointment in the cadre of Claims Tracers, while in the case of those who were recruited between the years 1957 and 1960 it has been calculated on the basis of the date of initial appointment in the railway service. Learned counsel for the petitioner concede that if the first criterion (date of entry into the cadre of Claims Tracers) had been applied only to those Claims Tracers who were appointed on the basis of selection and the second criterion (date of initial recruitment to the railway service) only to those recruited on the basis of seniority-cum-suitability, there would be no discrimination and no breach of Articles 14 and 16. He has asserted, however, that clerks who were recruited in precisely the same manner, namely those appointed in 1956 and those appointed between 1957 and 1960 (all of whom according to him were appointed purely on the basis of seniority-cum-suitability, different criteria have been used for the calculation of seniority, the 1956 batch having been allotted seniority on the basis of the date of appointment merit in the Claims Tracer's cadre, while the subsequent recruits have been allotted seniority on the basis of the date of their initial appointment in the railway service. This argument pre supposes that the recruits of year 1956 were appointed in the same manner as those Claims Tracers recruited in subsequent years But para 10 of the petition shows that "to the end of the year 1955 no Claims Tracers were appointed otherwise than from persons who had been selected or empanelled after selection" This shows that the 1956 recruits fell in the same category as those who were selected in the year 1952 and that they were not recruited on the same basis as those who were appointed between the years 1957 and 1960 No discrimination can therefore be said to have been practised is lumping the 1956 recruits along with those recruited earlier and assigning them seniority on the basis of a different criterion from that adopted in the case of recruits, appointed between 1957 and 1960. 6. Learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn my attention to para 12 of the petition, which states that the Claims Tracers appointed in 1956 were all appointed on the basis of seniority-cum-suitability. This assertion, however, is flatly contradicted by the contents of para 10 referred to above, which has been sworn by the petitioner to be correct. No attempt has been made to get para 10 corrected or amended and the petitioner is bound by the averments made therein. 7. This petition accordingly fails on both the points raised and is accordingly dismissed with costs.