IAS (Pay) Rules, 2016 – Promotion to the grade of Chief Secretary – Denial of – General Guidelines for Promotion etc. and functioning of Screening Committees – 90% of updated and complete ACRs/PARs of an officer were required for promotion – Though 90% of the appellant’s ACRs were not written, he was considered as a special case based on available ACRs – Screening Committee found the appellant ineligible for promotion since 90% of his ACRs were not available – Review rejected by Review Committee – Challenge thereto dismissed by CAT – High Court gave liberty to the appellant to approach the authorities for generation of 90% of the ACRs and reconsideration of his case – Review Committee, if could have considered the adverse entries made in ACRs/PARs prior to the appellant’s earlier promotion in 2016 to the grade of Principal Secretary and whether it considered extraneous materials in rejecting the appellant’s prayer for review, as alleged:
Held: The Committee was entitled to consider the entire service record of the appellant while considering him for promotion to the highest echelons of civil service – If the service record of the officer post promotion shows a similar trend of lack of discipline or interpersonal skills as reflected in the earlier entries, it may lend assurance to conclusion of the Committee that the earlier promotion has not invigorated the officer concerned and he continues to dwell in similar aberrations justifying the denial of further promotion – Review Committee on examining the entire service record of appellant noted that in 2019-20 appellant had absented himself for about a year without justifiable cause – A show cause notice was also issued in this regard – Said period was treated as ‘non-duty’ i.e. absence without leave – This conduct was taken into consideration to deny promotion to appellant to the highest echelon of civil service – Thus, it cannot be said that the decision of the Review Committee was solely based on adverse entries in ACRs/PARs prior to promotion or on uncommunicated observations in the Fact Finding report – Committee was justified in giving due weightage to lack of adherence to discipline and collegiality – Furthermore, on facts, there was a fair and objective assessment by Review Committee after taking into consideration both commendations and adverse conduct of appellant – Decision of the Committee was neither mala fide nor unreasonable. [Paras 18, 19, 21, 22, 24]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Divya Pandey. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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