Vijay Mohan
Chandigarh, January 30
The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has directed the Army to consider a colonel for promotion to the rank of Brigadier afresh after observing lapses in the prescribed rules and procedures over five years after he was first considered for elevation.
A serving colonel had approached the Tribunal over his non-empanelment by the selection board over the manner in which his confidential reports (CR) for a particular period were processed and inadequate redressal of his complaints thereof.
In 2013, a court of inquiry (COI) was ordered to investigate into certain lapses by the officer and he was awarded a censure. A second COI against the applicant was held in 2015 and he was again given a censure in 2016.
The officer was considered for promotion to the rank of Brigadier in 2017 and was not empanelled. Aggrieved, he filed a non-statutory complaint in 2018 on which he was granted partial redressal where one grading in the CR by the initiating officer and reviewing officer in two different CRs were expunged and four other CRs were also expunged, having been found technically invalid
The officer was also directed to be considered for promotion as a special review fresh case, but was not empanelled after being considered twice.
In his petition before the AFT, the officer contended that he cannot be made a victim of a situation where out of a total of six CRs pertaining to the period of disciplinary action, four were set aside mere on grounds that the senior reviewing officer’s (SRO) permission was not taken when under similar condition subsequent CRs were permitted merely because of a change in policy.
The Tribunal observed that records indicated that no sanction was taken from the Military Secretary’s (MS) Branch as required in the absence of a SRO and the internal assessment had missed the fact that the applicant was under a disciplinary process and that permission was required.
“We are of the opinion that if this was indeed such an important infringement, it ought to have been identified during internal assessment and necessary action taken,” the Tribunal’s Bench comprising Justice Rajendra Menon and Lt Gen PM Hariz held.
The Bench further said whether it was possible for the MS Branch to have granted an ex post facto sanction to cover the lapse, on the premise that there was nothing that would have denied a sanction in the first place, has also not been explored, examined and documented.
“We are of the opinion that obtaining sanction in the first place was an organisational responsibility of the unit to which the petitioner was posted and cannot be seen to be the responsibility of the petitioner himself. Moreover, we also hold that having ‘missed’ the issue and having identified these CRs as being technically valid only in August 2018, considering the special circumstances of this case, this lapse should have been regularised by the MS Branch when it came to its notice for the first time,” the Bench said
Stating that that serious prejudice had been caused to the petitioner with these four CRs being set aside as technically invalid, the Bench ordered that these four CRs be restored and the officer be considered for promotion in the earlier selection boards where the four CRs were not included in the reckonable profile. The Bench did not interfere in the proceedings of two other boards in which the officer was not empanelled.