Services tribunal quashes RPS promotion list

Services tribunal quashes RPS promotion list

Court Directs State To Reconvene DPC Meeting

Abhinav Sharma TNN 

Jaipur: The Rajasthan Services Appellate Tribunal (RAT) on Friday quashed the 2013 super time-scale promotion list of the RPS cadre from which officers were to be promoted to the IPS cadre. 
    The court further directed the state government to reconvene the DPC (departmental promotion committee) meeting for preparing a revised promotion list of the RPS cadre within three months. The order will affect all promotions from the RPS to the IPS cadre that the government was planning to take up shortly. 
    A division bench of RAT comprising chairman B B Mohanty and member Anil Kumar Jain passed the order on an appeal filed by RPS officer Satish Kumar Khurana. 
    Khurana alleged before the Tribunal that in granting promotions to the super timescale on January 28 this year, the state government superseded him in promoting RPS officers Pramod Kumar Sharma and Om Prakash Sharma. 
    Khurana’s counsel Harsh Vardhan Nandwana told the Tribunal that the officer’s annual progress reports for the years 1994-95 and 1996-97 were deliberately downgraded in violation of the law and the DPC, too, was convened in violation of the guidelines issued by the Department of Personnel in 1998. 
    The state government, on the other hand, argued that the service record of Khurana was not good enough and therefore, he was not allowed promotion to the selection scale in 2001-02, while subsequent promotions were allowed to him. As such, there was nothing illegal in the promotions and the officer cannot challenge the adverse entries now. 
    Brushing aside the government objections, the RAT bench observed, “The appellant is not challenging the adverse entries, but his downgrading. When the appellant was rated outstanding by his reporting officer and very good by his reviewing officer, his downgrading by the accepting officer in a mechanical manner without recording reasons, thereof, cannot be sustained.” 
    The Tribunal was told that all adverse entries against Khurana had already been expunged by the high court in 1998.