Justice delayed: A stab at a promotion after 11 years of struggle

Employee of SHC granted interim relief after 11 years as court agrees to include his name in the promotion list.

KARACHI: An employee of the Sindh High Court (SHC) was granted interim relief after 11 years when the court agreed to include his name in the list of employees to be considered for promotion.

A bench comprising Justice Shahid Anwar Bajwa and Justice Tufail H Ebrahim heard counsel for Maqsood Ahmed, an assistant in the SHC last week.

The petitioner moved the court against the SHC registrar and the law secretary. He said he was appointed a junior grade 5 clerk in 1981 then promoted to grade 7 as a senior clerk in 1989 and again promoted to a grade 9 senior clerk in 1995. The petitioner said he was No. 2 on the list of successful candidates but then his name was removed without any reason or justification.

Ahmed then appealed to the chief justice of the SHC on September 12, 2000, who ordered, “In view of the facts and circumstances I am of the view that great injustice has been done to the applicant.” The chief justice ordered that the petitioner be promoted to grade 9 and benefits of the position be conferred to him from September 17, 1995. That order was, however, never implemented. The petitioner’s repeated appeals to higher officials fell on deaf ears.

In April 2005, the petitioner appealed to the then CJ Sabihuddin Ahmed, who endorsed the earlier order. “No further order is required to be passed except that it is open to the applicant to participate in the forthcoming or any future test for promotion as assistant,” he had observed.

The CJ also ordered due seniority to be given to him according to the rules. The petitioner was consequently promoted to the post of assistant on June 13, 2008. After this, Ahmed moved an application on June 25, 2008 to decide his seniority.

The petitioner’s counsel, Khalid Ali Z Kazi, maintained that the court registrars just kept delaying the issue. To date, his case is pending before one or the other committee constituted by the registrars and he has yet to receive his promotion. Kazi told the court that SHC is going to hold interviews for the post of Assistant Registrar/Reader (grade 18) on December 11 and December 18 and if the petitioner is not called, he will suffer irreparable loss. Ahmed’s name has still not been included in the list of candidates despite orders. The bench issued notice to the respondent SHC Registrar for a date to be fixed later. Meanwhile, it ordered that the petitioner’s name be included in the list of candidates to be called for an interview on December 18.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2010.