Backdated promotion case: IHC overrules single bench order

Former IG Habib Khan had been granted a backdated promotion by a single bench

ISLAMABAD:

A division bench of the Islamabad High Court on Wednesday ruled that former minister and retired police official Mohammad Habib Khan was not entitled to promotion to grade 21, setting aside a single bench ruling.

The establishment division had appealed against the IHC single bench verdict handed down in 2012, where then-IHC Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman ordered his promotion to grade 22 with backdated benefits.

Khan joined the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) in 1976 as a superintendent after serving in the Pakistan Army for 10 years, where he retired as a major. Khan retired from the police in 2005 and had argued that he was deprived of a promotion to BPS-22 in 2002.

The division bench, comprising Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui and Justice Athar Minallah, issued a verdict that Khan, who was caretaker interior minister in 2013, was not entitled to the promotion.

During the course of arguments, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Raja Khalid Mehmood informed the court that the case for Khan’s post retirement promotion had been referred to the relevant federal government committee.

The IHC bench’s Wednesday order says that promotion in not a vested right of a civil servant, but rather at the discretion of the appointing authority. The appointing authority can promote a civil servant subject to fulfilment of required criteria, the order explained, adding that the court may only intervene if wrongdoing is proven during the promotion process.

Background

In his previous case, Khan had argued that in 1998, the PML-N government had appointed Khan as inspector general of the Balochistan Police. Former president Gen Pervez Musharraf later removed him in November 1999, a month after deposing the elected government in a military coup.

In 2002, Khan filed a petition to get his seniority and backdated benefits. In the petition, he adopted that “The Central Selection Board (CSB) in its meeting on August 9, 2002, recommended the name of the petitioner for promotion from BPS-20 to BPS-21.”

The petition said the CSB reconvened its meeting on September 6, 2002, and under ‘pressure’, dropped his name from the list. He was later promoted to BPS-21 on August 5, 2003 without backdate benefits, while the matter was being heard by the LHC. Because of this, he lost his seniority.

Khan then filed a departmental appeal on August 27, 2003, seeking restoration of seniority, but it was not entertained. He retired from service on February 14, 2005, and in 2006 approached the Federal Service Tribunal (FST) seeking a promotion to grade 22.

He adopted before the court that due to the one year delay in his promotion to grade 21, he was not considered for promotion to grade 22.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th,  2016.