Supreme Court asks IHC to explain hiring anomalies

Top court seeks reply on a plea alleging 73 appointments were made illegally in Islamabad court

ISLAMABAD: The apex court has asked the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to give an explanation on the Accountant General of Pakistan Revenue (AGPR) report, which claims many appointments in the IHC violated rules and merit criteria.

The three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk, was hearing a constitutional petition against the alleged 73 illegal appointments in IHC. Hearing of the case was adjourned until January 26.

The petition was filed on December 31, 2013 by the former vice president of IHC, Chaudhry Muhammad Akram under Article 184(3) of the constitution, making the high court’s registrar, deputy registrar Adrees Khan Kasi and 73 other officials as respondents. Akram requested the court to initiate legal proceedings against all those involved in the appointments.

It is noteworthy that the appointments were made after the re-establishment of IHC in 2010.

Revealing more, the report said that during the scrutiny of the personnel’s files, the auditors “observed that not a single appointment had been made on merit, and that a number of appointments were made in relaxation of rules. Generally, the absorption is made in the same scale or one stage above,” notes the report. “But in the IHC the deputing officers were absorbed in much higher scales.”

It maintained, “It is more alarming that even after advertising the posts of non-gazetted cadres, they were still filled by relaxing the rules and the applicants who had applied against the said posts were deprived of their fundamental right to compete for the job.”

Citing some examples, it said the luckiest among the 11 deputation officers was Shakeel Raza who was working in the Balochistan Assembly in BPS-7 and was absorbed in the IHC in BPS-17. Another strange case was the appointment of Usman Mir as assistant registrar in BPS-18. Before joining the IHC, he was working in a private bank as credit risk analyst.

Likewise, the AGPR was critical of the fresh recruitments in the IHC, contending there was “no justification for invoking the rule (about relaxing the rule for making appointments).

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th,  2015.