Secy fails to produce criteria in SC

ISLAMABAD Out-of-turn promotions case of 54 officers on Tuesday took a new turn when Secretary Establishment Division Ismail Qureshi failed to produce the criteria under which the Prime Minister approved these officers promotions last year.
During the course of proceedings, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry questioned, Is there any criteria or formula for availability of vacancies as well as for promotion in Establishment Division following the Article 240 of the Constitution?
To that Mr Qureshi failed to produce formula/rules of civil service under which the big bosses were promoting their subordinates. Merit is the only criteria for any promotion from Grade 21 to Grade 22 in accordance with Civil Servants Act 1973 and some historic judgements, the court observed. A three-member bench of the Supreme Court was hearing the case of out-of-turn promotions of 54 BPS-21 officers to BSP 22. Justice Ijaz Chaudhry and Justice Ghulam Rabbani were the other judges of the bench.
Some officers with impeccable record since 2003 have been ignored and officers without a single annual confidential report were selected for Grade-22, lawyers of petitioners put their arguments before the court.
Hafeez Pirzada, counsel for the federal government informed the court that Prime Minister on his discretion promoted the officers in the light of their last years record.
He also informed the court that a total number of 266 officers were in BPS-21 and 54 of them were promoted while 213 officers were not being promoted and some 5-7 seats were lying vacant. They are eligible and can be considered for promotion if they approach the Government through proper channels, Pirzada said. On this point Chief Justice said, the promotion should be on merit because they (officers) were responsible persons of society.
The court should be informed as well as reasons should be mentioned as why policy of pick and choose was being applied by the government, he said. The court said the officers will become political if they approach the politicians.
Besides, Pirzada said that it was not the case of superseding and only 8 out of 213 officers knocked the SC door, he added.
Some 19,800 officers of BPS 17-24 are serving in Pakistan, how will all of them can be promoted to fulfil the criteria of good governance, Pirzada said. Can any judge say that he has not been elevated to the Supreme Court in his career? he asked. Akram Sheikh, who represented 67 applicants argued that the selection or promotion to the BPS-22 posts had been excluded from the Promotion Policy, 1985 as amended in 2007 Policy, meaning thereby that selection of the post of BPS-22 has been left to the sole choice and discretion of Prime Minister.
Akram Sheikh observed that a strange pattern was observed in promotion, where seniority has been set aside and very junior officers and some recently promoted Grade 21 officers were promoted. The entire edifice of the civil services would crumble if merit is subjected to discretion and a public service which has served as a great shock-absorber against most of the political turmoil in the country would fall like a house of cards, he argued. He mentioned names of some lucky persons, who were promoted through pick and choose method.
These consist of Zafeer Abbasi, Tariq Iqbal, Anis Al-Hussain, Agha Sarawar, Javid Sarawar, Ayub Khan Tarin, Ghalib-ud-Din, Mansoor Sohail, Haroon Shaukat, Khalid Khattak, Amir Akram, Mansoor Khan, Jaleel Abbas Jialni and Tariq Azizudin. Irfan Kundi Advocate pleaded for Khurshid Anwar arguing that the provincial quota was not also being considered in promotion matters.
The authorities concerned in promotion of officers were not considering the recommendations of Article 27 of the Constitution, he argued.
Ikram Chaudhry, counsel for Muhammad Hafeez Ambassodor in Algeria, was also present before the court and recorded his arguments. Nazir Ahmad of Income Tax was appeared before the court with his counsel Aslam Khaki.
Khaki also gave reference of some Quranic versus translating them Do the justicestand with the Justice.
He mentioned two names of Moin-ul-Islam Bokhari of National Assembly and Javid Akhtar, both ex-cadre, have no record of their service. Haider Hussain Advocate also represented his client Masood Muzafar and Mohammad Salim in the court.
Salimullah Khan, an ex-CSP officer tried to become a party but court did no club his plea. Later, the court ordered Attorney General of Pakistan to prepare himself before the court for helping the court in this case with full preparations. Then the court adjourned the hearing till tomorrow (Thursday).