Bureaucrats affiliated with political parties get promoted: Orya Maqbool Jan

Jan had been ignored for promotion twice without being told the reason.

LAHORE:

Archives Secretary Orya Maqbool Jan filed a petition before the Supreme Court on Monday, requesting directions to promote him from Basic Pay Scale (BPS)-20 to 21 and to ensure free and fair enquiry of assets owned by civil servants in the promotion zone.

Jan said only bureaucrats affiliated with ruling political parties received promotions. This is sheer violation of merit, he said.

He submitted that he had served in Balochistan for many years. He said he had received promotions from BPS-18 in 1990 to 19 in 1998 and to BPS-20 in 2006. “All my evaluation reports called me a ‘very good’ officer,” he said.

He submitted that he had been superseded for promotion from BPS-20 to 21 in March 2011, without being told the reason. He said other candidates who had been similarly superseded had filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court, which had declared the Civil Service Board’s (CSB) discretion as illegal and superficial.

Jan said a second board meeting was held on February 14, 2013. He was asked to submit his Annual Confidential Review for 2012, but Jan said, he was again denied promotion at the board’s meeting on February 27.

He said former president Pervaiz Musharaf had detained him for writing in favour of the independence of judiciary. Jan said he had defied unlawful orders. His refusal to allot 8 kanals of state land on The Mall to the Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust was an example of this.

He prayed the court to summon the CSB’s records to assess promotions made on political exigencies. Jan prayed the court to outline objective criteria for promotions to make the civil service rewarding for honest officers.

He requested the court to hold a free and fair enquiry of assets held by civil servants in the promotion zone by comparing those with their assets at the time when they joined the service.

He said efficiency should be linked to the level of independence an officer gets during his service. He prayed to be promoted to Grade-21 according to entitlement.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2013.