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SC issues contempt notice to DoPT Secretary for violating order on promotion

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and Vineet Saran issued a notice to the top officers of the Union government on the contempt petition filed by Debananda Sahoo
Last Updated 09 April 2021, 17:42 IST

The Supreme Court on Friday asked the secretaries of the Department of Personnel and Training to explain why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them for breach of its status quo order on the promotion of central government employees.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and Vineet Saran issued a notice to the top officers of the Union government on the contempt petition filed by Debananda Sahoo against them for violation of the top court's order of April 15, 2019.

The petitioner led by advocate Kumar Parimal contended that the top court had on April 15, 2019, directed for maintaining the status quo as to the promotion of the officers. The DoPT made an application for permission to grant ad-hoc promotion, which was declined on July 22, 2020.

However, the DoPT had on December 11, 2020, issued promotion orders in favour of 149 officers from selection grade (deputy secretary) of the central secretariat service to senior selection grade (director) on an ad-hoc basis. Of this, 55 deputy secretaries belonged to the reserved category and had taken benefit of reservation in promotion and consequential seniority in their career earlier.

"The promotion order was issued without reviewing the select list of under secretary for the year 2003 and onwards and consequential review of deputy secretary select list of 2003 and onwards in terms of Constitution bench judgements in M Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh," the plea claimed.

Thus, it is crystal clear that the contemnors have deliberately, willfully and dishonestly disobeyed the order of this court, making them liable for punishment under the Contempt of Courts Act, it contended.

In the Constitution bench decisions of Nagaraj (2006) and Jarnail Singh (2018), the top court had laid down conditionalities like the collection of data on the inadequacy of representation, the overall effect on efficiency on administration and removing creamy layers in considering reservation in promotion.

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(Published 09 April 2021, 17:42 IST)

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