Correcting a wrong: SC upholds IHC decision to promote 300 officers

AAG admits to having loopholes in CSB promotion criteria


Riazul Haq March 14, 2017
AAG admits to having loopholes in CSB promotion criteria. PHOTO: EXPRESS

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has upheld the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) decision to promote the remaining 300 civil servants whose promotions had been deferred by the Central Selection Board (CSB) in 2015.

SC Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, after hearing arguments of both the parties, upheld the IHC decision of June 2015, on Monday.

The CSB had promoted around 500 civil servants, out of 800, in May 2015. The decision was challenged in the IHC by the remaining 300 distressed civil servants.

Additional Attorney General Afnan Karim Kundi, while representing the federal government, said in total the government promoted 500 officers since 2015. There are lacunas in the CSB promotion criteria but the promotions were carried out after thorough scrutiny and painstaking exercise.

“The government can reconsider the promotions of aggrieved officers,” he added.

The CJ replied if the government tried it could easily resolve the issue. Barrister Masroor Shah, representing the civil servants, said the bureaucrats had contended before the IHC that the minimum threshold of marks for the promotions was 75. The CSB had the discretion to award 15 marks keeping in view the integrity and personal reputation of the officers.

The officers had also maintained before the IHC that a circular issued on Feb 10, 2014, placed 15 marks at the discretion of the CSB, while five marks were meant for integrity, general reputation and perception.

The affected officers had pleaded that during the promotions of the bureaucrats in May 2015, these 15 marks were blatantly misused to provide a total of 75 marks to some of the low-scoring officers, while many others who had genuine 75-plus marks from their service records were ignored.

The government had empowered the board not to recommend the promotion of a bureaucrat who fails to obtain a minimum three out of the five marks. Hence, these five marks are superseding the remaining 95 marks. It means that despite securing 95 per cent marks an officer cannot be promoted unless the board grants him/her at least three out of the five marks.

Shah stated that it was unfair that his clients were not given those three marks for promotion even though they (civil servants) had excellent annual confidential reports and overall service records.

Out of the 300 officers, about 21 were of Grade 21 who were supposed to be promoted to Grade 22, while the rest were those who were denied promotion in Grade 20.

The SC’s decision has created tension among the senior officers as the CSB deferred promotions of 95 officers.

In one of the cases, the then chief justice Nasirul Mulk suggested improvements in CSB including the marks about integrity of an officer.

The government submitted a reply to the court that they were reviewing the law about integrity of marks.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14th, 2017.

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