Madras High Court has directed the State to notionally promote a former Additional Director-General of Police as Director-General of Police, a post which fell vacant in 2007 prior to his retirement.
Rejecting the contention of the State that it could operate only two cadre posts and two ex-cadre posts in the rank of DGP in the ratio of 1:1 and hence could not accommodate S V Venkatakrishnan, a division bench comprising justices Elipe Dharma Rao and M Venugopal observed that in the affidavit itself, the government had said in 2007 six posts of DGP were in operation.
The bench was dismissing a writ petition by the TN Government challenging an order dated April 1, 2010 of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) directing the government to notionally promote Venkatakrishnan, a 1974 batch IPS officer, who retired on September 30, 2007. The CAT had also directed the govt to refix his pay after granting him the promotion and rework his retirement benefits and pay the sum due to him. Against this order, the State Government filed the present writ petition. It submitted that no mala fide could be attributed to the Government for not conducting the screening committee meeting.
The bench said when a vacancy arose due to the retirement of an officer from ex-cadre on July 31, 2007, the State had not filled up the same as the candidate available was Venkatakrishnan. He was never the government’s choice. That was the reason why the government had not taken any steps towards filling the vacancy; but to escape the clutches of law, it invented a reason that it had not felt any imminent necessity to fill up the vacancy.
The factum of singling out the applicant and transferring him to Trichi as Chief Vigilance Officer of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (Kumbakonam) in June 2006, which was not an ADGP cadre post and slapping a charge memo on him in 2007 for an alleged dereliction committed in 1993 (which was not proved) would all drive us at an irresistible conclusion that the petitioner was biased towards the applicant and only to humiliate him, he was victimised, the bench said.
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