*All 1999 batch KAS officers to get Selection Grade
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Nov 4: Jammu and Kashmir Government and beneficiaries of ‘controversial’ stopgap arrangement have failed to get any reprieve from the Supreme Court of India, which neither has modified nor stayed the order of the Division Bench of State High Court regarding reversion of 30 KAS officers from Special Scale to the Selection Grade. However, the Apex Court has ordered grant of Selection Grade to all the KAS officers of 1999 batch with the stipulation that this benefit would not impact the seniority to be fixed by the State High Court.
The order was passed by Supreme Court Bench comprising Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice Misra after hearing Senior Advocate P P Rao and Advocate Abhinav Sharma appearing for the respondents (petitioners before the Division Bench of State High Court) and Senior Advocate Harish Salve for the petitioners.
The State and the beneficiaries of the stopgap arrangement have made three prayers before the Apex Court of the country. The first prayer pertains to the release of Selection Grade to all the KAS officers of 1999 batch across the board. The second prayer is about granting permission for extension of interim arrangements, whereby several Selection Grade KAS officers were placed in the Special Scale. By way of third prayer, the State has sought permission to make additional promotions on temporary basis.
While the first prayer was considered by the Supreme Court Bench, it declined to alter or stay the order of Division Bench of J&K High Court whereby it had restricted the State Government from continuing with the controversial stopgap arrangement. Moreover, Apex Court has not given permission for making additional promotions on temporary basis. The Supreme Court has simply issued notices to the party respondents in the petitions seeking their response.
Now, the wide ramifications of this order would be that some officers holding key positions like Farooq Shah, Deputy Commissioner Ramban, R A Inqalabi, Director School Education Jammu, Tassaduq Jeelani, Deputy Commissioner Anantnag, Arshad Ayub, Special Secretary Home, G N Itoo, Project Director ICDS, Shabnam Kamili, Special Secretary are to be reverted to the Selection Grade.
The litigations between KAS officers and the State Government started over the preparation of the final seniority list, which was dubbed as full of distortions by several KAS officers and after being denied seniority slots because of no-fault of theirs, a section of them knocked the doors of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to get justice.
On November 8, 2013, Single Judge delivered judgment in the favour of petitioners holding them entitled to proportionate slot share as per J&K Administrative Services Rules, 2008. While holding the petitioners entitled for retrospective effect of induction, the Single Judge had observed that every feeding service has the proportionate share in the KAS and the petitioners shall demonstrate before the Government that induction has taken place from 2004 to 2008 and their case was left out.
However, the judgment of the Single Judge was challenged before the Division Bench, which initially directed the State Government to maintain status quo with regard to the promotion of the officers. On further consideration of various appeals including the one filed by State seeking stay on the judgment of the Single Judge, the DB on February 5, 2014 modified the order of status quo by permitting the appellant State to make arrangements for general elections to the Lok Sabha by deputing officers from Time Scale, Selection Scale and Special Scale.
However, the DB made it clear that interim arrangements would come to an end within 10 days after the completion of Lok Sabha elections on May 31, 2014. For the obvious reasons, the State Government within next few days again moved an application seeking more relaxations to overcome the then administrative difficulty.
While considering this application, the DB vide its order dated February 13, 2014, permitted the State to make stop gap arrangements by considering the cases of those senior officers including the non-applicant-writ petitioners for induction in Special Scale of KAS as an interim measure. However, the DB again reiterated that the interim arrangement shall come to an end 10 days after May 31, 2014 and it shall not be extended any further.
In the meanwhile, State Government filed Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court against the order dated February 13, 2014 with the plea that impugned direction of the Division Bench of J&K High Court was bad in law. However, the Supreme Court issued notice limited to the question of consideration of the claim of the writ petitioners under the review mechanism provided under Rule 15(4) of the 2008 Rules.
As expected relief could not be obtained from the Supreme Court, the State Government again filed an application before the DB seeking extension of interim arrangement allowed vide order dated February 13, 2014. But, the DB in the month of August this year dismissed the application filed by the State and made it clear that there will be no more stopgap arrangement on induction of KAS officers in Special Scale.
Instead of implementing the directions of the Division Bench, J&K Government preferred to allow interim arrangement as such 30 officers continued to hold posts of Special Secretary and Heads of the Department and then knocked the doors of the Apex Court, which didn’t allow the prayer for staying or modifying the DB’s order.
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