Shimla, June 23: The Himachal Pradesh High Court has come down heavily on the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) for exceeding its brief and violating earlier court directions, while quashing its decision that denied promotion to Ashwani Kumar, a government employee, to the post of Superintendent Grade-I.
Justice Sandeep Sharma, in a strongly-worded judgment, held that the DPC had "wrongly undertaken the exercise of re-examining" Kumar’s earlier promotions to Senior Assistant (2010) and Superintendent Grade-II (2018), even though those had never been challenged by any party or the department.
The DPC, which met on December 1, 2022, was mandated only to consider Kumar’s eligibility for promotion to Superintendent Grade-I, as directed by the High Court in a previous order dated November 25, 2022.
Kumar had approached the court after the DPC not only rejected his promotion to Superintendent Grade-I but also went a step further and declared his earlier promotions to be invalid—effectively pushing back his service record.
The DPC held that Kumar was eligible for promotion to Superintendent Grade-II only after December 21, 2022, undermining his existing promotion which had been in place since January 1, 2018.
The High Court was unequivocal in stating that the DPC's action was beyond its jurisdiction.
“There was no occasion for DPC to re-open the issue of promotions to Senior Assistant and Superintendent Grade-II which had attained finality and were never challenged,” the judge noted.
The court also dismissed the argument raised by the respondents that Kumar’s appeal was pending before the Chairman of the Trust, stating that such a procedural step cannot override the High Court’s specific directions and legal scrutiny.
In a scathing observation, the court noted that the DPC violated the very purpose of the meeting convened under judicial directions.
“The agenda was specifically prepared for consideration of the petitioner for promotion to the post of Superintendent Grade-I from Superintendent Grade-II.
However, it appears that DPC, in violation of mandate, wrongly undertook a review of promotions that were not under question,” Justice Sharma wrote.
The court has now ordered the respondent-department to convene a review DPC within two weeks and reconsider Kumar’s promotion in light of the court’s earlier and current directions.
If found eligible, his promotion will be backdated to December 2, 2022—the date when the department was originally required to act.
The judgment reaffirms that administrative committees must strictly adhere to judicial directives and cannot re-open settled issues without legal challenge.
—Ends—