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ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court froze on Tuesday all promotions or demotions in the Punjab police and directed the department not to disturb seniority of any officer till final orders of the court.
A bench comprising Justice Javed Iqbal and Justice Ghulam Rabbani which has taken up suo motu notice of shoulder promotions in the police department expressed grave concern over large-scale irregularities in awarding such promotions to a number of officers.The court spent the day hearing complaints of a number of police officers who had been recruited directly as inspectors but were ignored and their juniors and subordinates were promoted.
The court made it clear that the suo motu proceedings were not meant to redress individual grievances and ordered the Punjab police chief to positively decide within a week all representations of officers pending before him.
In police parlance shoulder promotion is the practice of promoting officers to the next rank by a superior officer, while in normal practice a board is constituted to decide which officers are to be promoted. In the event of delays in forming such a board or in its meeting officers are allowed to promote those working immediately under them to fill any vacancies provided the personnel being promoted have the required experience. But in actual practice merit is ignored in such promotions.The court regretted that it had not been able to have a look at rules under which a number of people were promoted, although it had asked for it.
The court made it clear that it would issue a final order after giving an opportunity to all stakeholders when the matter would again be taken up after two weeks.
The bench required certain information from the provincial police chief to help it reach a final decision. It asked him to provide information about the total number of vacancies in the Punjab police, allocation of quota for different categories, how categories were made and also the details about promotion of women police officers in senior ranks.
Meanwhile, a number of inspectors, directly recruited in 1998 but are awaiting promotions, said in a representation that more than 550 junior inspectors had been given ante-dated seniority while 3,150 junior staff were to get similar favours because of the personal benefits of the clerical staff and biased attitude in the police towards the CSP (civil services of Pakistan).
They suggested a number of measures to rectify the situation and said that the August 2006 order of the Provincial Service Tribunal that had rejected shoulder promotions should be implemented in letter and spirit.
They also suggested that DSPs who were promoted without having mandatory experience of seven years be revered.
