CAT ensures fair play in recruitments and promotions

The quest to ensure fair play in recruitments and conditions in public services marked the year 2011 for the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) which sent a stern message to the Centre and states and rapped the Gujarat and Uttarakhand governments for their decisions on IPS and IAS officers.

The tribunal came down heavily on the Narendra Modi government and quashed the charge-memo issued to senior IPS officer Kuldeep Sharma, saying it gave an impression that he "has fallen out of favour of the state government".

The CAT found that the decision against Sharma "smacked off from the ills" conceived by the authorities for his adverse interim report to the Supreme Court on Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

The Uttarakhand government also came in the line of fire when the tribunal quashed the promotion of Subhash Kumar as state's chief secretary, along with two other top bureaucrats of the state cadre on the ground that the government promoted them in this rank against only one vacancy.

Similarly, it left the Union Law Ministry embarrassed by scrapping its appointment process for recruitment of deputy government counsel under the prestigious Indian Legal Service.

The tribunal held that once the selection process starts, the prescribed criteria cannot be changed and the Law ministry "had changed the rules of the game, while the game was in progress".

Meanwhile among other developments, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry also faced the wrath of the tribunal which imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on it for forcing one of its officials into litigation by harassing him on "flimsy grounds" and then taking a "frivolous defence" against his harassment plea.