New Delhi, July 5 The Supreme Court on Monday refused to discharge the Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), from the contempt proceedings for allegedly breaching its status quo order on promotion of Central government employees.
Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, representing the Centre, contended that there was material suppression of facts in the contempt petition and only "temporary and ad hoc promotions" have been made as he urged the top court to discharge the official against the backdrop of these facts.
However, a bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Aniruddha Bose, declined to accept the argument and scheduled the matter for further hearing in the second week of August.
On April 9, the top court had issued contempt notice to the Secretary, seeking explanation on a plea claiming breach of status quo order of the top court on promotion of Central government employees.
A plea had been filed by Debananda Sahoo, through advocate Kumar Parimal, against the senior official for violation of the top court's order of April 15, 2019. In Nagraj (2006) and Jarnail Singh (2018) cases, the apex court laid down conditionalities like collection of data on inadequacy of representation, overall effect on efficiency on administration and removing creamy layers, before considering reservation in promotion.
After a brief hearing in the matter, a bench of Justices Nageswara Rao and Vineet Saran had issued notice on the contempt petition filed by Sahoo. The plea contended the top court had directed for maintaining status quo as to promotion of the officers, and the DoPT made an application for permission to grant ad-hoc promotion, which was declined on July 22, 2020. However, it went on to issue promotion orders on December 11, 2020, in favour of 149 officers. These officers were from selection grade (Deputy Secretary) of the Central Secretariat Service to senior selection grade (Director) on ad-hoc basis.
"The promotion order was issued without reviewing select list of Under Secretaries 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.
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