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THE federal government has recently announced a change in the selection and promotion policy of civil servants. As per the new policy, greater discretion has been given to the Central Selection Board, which is a body of senior civil servants from the Establishment branch who determine which civil servants deserve to be promoted. Now 30 discretionary marks will be granted by the CSB, in contrast to the 15 allowed earlier. These 30 marks will be awarded on the CSB’s assessment of whether an officer is fit to take a leadership/management role on the basis of ‘intelligence reports’.
It seems that the serious institutional reforms (which might take longer but is a better solution for this country’s entrenched and inefficient bureaucratic system) the federal government once promised have been sidelined in favour of a convenient policy change used by governments in the past to rig the CSB so that they could fill the higher echelons of our governmental departments with their favourites, and so on.
While helpful in allowing a government to control the bureaucracy, such a strategy only increases favouritism and nepotism in the upper management of the civil services in the long term. Thus, such promotion policies, which allow the CSB to have unstructured discretion in the appointment and promotion of officers, have consistently been held to be illegal.
In the Amanullah Khan case, the Supreme Court enumerated that “The seven instruments that are most useful in the structuring of discretionary power are open plans, open policy statements, open rules, open findings, open reasons, open precedents and fair informal procedure”. Simply put, the apex court held that the exercise of any discretion by a public authority should be accountable, transparent, reasonable and non-discriminatory.
The promise of serious reforms has been sidelined.
Almost a decade ago, former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry, in one of his better thought-out suo motus, applied this principle to the promotion of civil servants in the landmark Tariq Azizuddin case.
In its judgement, the Supreme Court held that the absolute discretion by the CSB in the selection and promotion of officers, which was and continues to be usually employed in a corrupt manner, is illegal. The apex court held that as per the Civil Servants Act and the requirement of Article 4 of the Constitution, any discretion exercised by the CSB should be structured, open and transparent. Basically, CSB members could no longer withhold marks or award marks on whims and personal prejudices: there needed to be objective criteria.
This was considered a very important development, as civil service officers could now be more independent as they knew they would be promoted on the basis of merit (ie good reviews and high marks) rather than having to earn the favour of their senior colleagues on the CSB.
More recently, in ‘Federation of Pakistan v Dr Muhammad Asif’ the Supreme Court once again struck down a change in the promotion policy that allowed the CSB to rely on confidential reports and personal knowledge for the award of five overriding marks within the earlier 15, which could be awarded or deducted on the basis of an officer’s “integrity, honesty and reputation”. The Supreme Court held that such discretion was illegal and vague, and the CSB was directed to only rely on the service dossier of the officer when deciding whether to promote, defer or supersede them.
Again, this judgement was very important as it ensured that any information relied upon by the CSB in deciding the promotion of any deserving officer, would be from the record of his or her service and not from any unsubstantiated or unknown source.
In light of these facts, one is left asking, why does the federal government not release a structured policy that will allow candidates before the CSB to be evaluated in a transparent manner on the basis of their past performances, their ratings amongst the public, their knowledge and subject matter expertise?
If the annual confidential reports are not reliable indicators of a candidate’s performance — as it is claimed that all officers end up having good ACRs due to a bit of bureaucratic camaraderie — then why not overhaul the reports to make them more reliable? How does giving the CSB more discretion to choose a particular officer for a post or promotion, without having it produce a written justification on why their chosen candidate was better than others, going to be better for the public?
These and other questions will be raised once again by the honourable justices of the high courts and the Supreme Court as the litigation carousel that has been civil service promotions once again opens its gates.
The writer is a human rights lawyer working in Islamabad.
Twitter: @OmerImranMalik
Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2019
