KARACHI, Jan 3: The Sindh High Court restrained the provincial excise and taxation department from finalizing the process of promotions to the posts of assistant excise and taxation officers till the next date of hearing of a petition challenging it.
Petitioners Mohammad Suleman, Kailash Advani, Khwaja Maqbool Mustafa and Ashfaq Ahmed Shaikh submitted that they were appointed excise and taxation inspectors in grade 14 on different dates in 1991 and 1992. Following the change of government in 1993, the services of all 77 inspectors appointed since 1991 were terminated.
The petitioners approached the Sindh Services Tribunal (SST), which reinstated them with retrospective effect by separate orders passed in 1998 and 2000. The intervening period was to be treated as leave due. Reinstatement orders were issued by the respondent department in compliance with the SST decision on their appeals.
However, their names were not included in the seniority lists issued in 1999 and 2003. Only one of them, Ashfaq Shaikh, was placed on the seniority list issued in 2005, though he was not assigned his due position. Another provisional list issued in 2007 contained the names of all the petitioners but without assigning them their seniority with effect from the date of their appointments. Several inspectors who joined service after them were mentioned ahead of them and were being considered for promotion as assistant excise and taxation officers in grade 16 in accordance with the provisional seniority lists.
The petitioners submitted through Advocate Mohammad Nawaz Shaikh that they filed their objections to the seniority lists but no final decision has been taken on them by the department. Pending a decision on their objections, however, the department decided to make promotions on the basis of the provisional seniority list and convened a meeting of the departmental promotions committee.
They said the promotion cases could not be decided on the basis of provisional seniority lists, particularly when their objections to it were awaiting disposal.
Since promotion matters cannot be adjudicated by the services tribunal, the petitioners said, they have no remedy but to invoke the writ jurisdiction of the high court. They requested the court to direct the respondent department to process and decide their objections before proceeding to consider promotion cases.
A division bench comprising Justices Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui and Rana M. Shamim issued a notice to the department for Jan 15 and asked it not to finalize the promotion cases in the meantime.
PTCL men’s salaries
Another division bench consisting of Chief Justice Mohammad Afzal Soomro and Justice Farrukh Zia A. Shaikh directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited to deposit the salaries of its six employees, termination of whose services was stayed by the high court in Oct 2007.
The petitioners -- operators and linesmen of the PTCL -- working in different cities of Sindh, said they were not being paid their salaries despite the court order. In fact, while withdrawing the suspended order in apparent compliance with the court order, the PTCL authorities ‘revived’ an earlier dismissal order to circumvent the injunction. Their counsel, Adnan Karim, informed the bench that only one of the petitioners had been paid his salary for Jan 2008. They moved a contempt application and the bench issued notices to the PTCL general manager for human resources and three others officers to answer the allegation on Jan 1.
The respondents failed to appear before the bench and it directed that fresh notices be issued to them for Jan 10. In the meanwhile, the salaries of the petitioners would be deposited by the PTCL with the SHC nazir.
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.