ISLAMABAD: The Establishment Division has notified the much awaited more than 350 promotions of the officers of different cadres from grade 19 to 20 and grade 20 to 21.
Sources said that the promotion recommendations though statedly underwent PM office’s protracted scrutiny and were further supplemented by intelligence agency’s reporting on the civil servants considered for promotion, yet the bureaucrats finally carried the day in securing promotions based on arbitrariness and violation of law.
Be it promotion to BS 20, 21 or 22, sources said that arbitrariness rules and the rule of law recedes in these promotions, enabling many [ineligible] civil servants to enjoy the powers and privileges of high grades in civil service.
An expected high powered board meeting on the eve of retirement of principal secretary to PM shows that the bureaucrats themselves have captured the driving seat in the promotion process and it is they who seem to be deciding when they will rise to which grade in their service career.
Sources said that the promotions to BS-22 are presently governed by the Civil Servants Act 1973, Civil Servants (Appointment, Promotion and Transfer) Rules, 1973 and the Civil Servants (Promotion to the post of Secretary, BS 22 and Equivalent) Rules, 2010.
Section 9(2) of the Civil Servants Act, 1973 permits promotion to BS 22 exclusively on merit while Section 9(1) of this Act defines merit in the form of certain qualifications for promotion to be prescribed in the rules.
Meanwhile, Rule 8-A of the Civil Servants (Appointment, Promotion and Transfer) Rules, 1973 enumerates three qualifications for BS 22 promotions namely, a performance evaluation merit achieved during the minimum required service in BS 21, merit earned in promotion related trainings and the merit secured in promotion related departmental examinations to be administered by the Federal Public service Commission to the various occupational groups of civil service.
These legal provisions in the Act and the Rules had accomplished that which the high powered promotion boards’ inattention and arbitrariness and the government’s rules framed in 2010 to regulate promotions to BS 22 seem to have altogether destroyed.
Sources disclosed that the legislature empowered the federal government through section 9(1) to prescribe in rules of 2010 the manner in which and the conditions subject to which the officers of different occupational groups promoted to BS 21 and BS 22 could be appointed respectively to the posts of Additional Secretary and Secretary to the federal government.
The federal government instead exercised while framing the rules of 2010 a power not conferred on it by the legislature. The government in fact exercised the power to lay down a set of easily achievable conditions for promotions to BS 22 by many civil servants and then to choose from amongst equally eligible competing civil servants those its choice and liking for their promotion to BS 22.
These promotion rules of 2010 do not supersede the promotion rules of 1973. Instead rules of 2010 provide for certain additional conditions for promotion to BS 22.
For instance, these rules provide that for promotion to BS 22, a civil servant must have completed 25 years service in BS 17 and above, must have earned three very good performance evaluation reports during the last six years of his service, must have a variety of experience and must not have incurred a penalty for any disciplinary violations in BS 21.
These additional requirements spelt out in 2010 rules for promotion to BS 22 do not delete the three qualifications already listed in 1973 rules for civil servants’ promotions to BS 22.
Instead of seeking in the aspirants for promotion to BS 22 all the three qualifications listed in 1973 rules and the four additional requirements listed in 2010 rules, the high powered promotion boards have been violating the express provisions of section 9(2) of the civil servants Act, 1973 which permit promotions to BS 22 only on merit and have also been unlawfully ignoring the provisions of rule 8-A of the 1973 rules which spell out precisely what counts in merit for promotions to BS 22 and how this merit envisaged in the Civil Servants Act is to be determined.
Sources internal to the promotion processes in civil service added that whereas 1973 rules lay down three merit indicating qualifications for promotion to BS 22, the 2010 rules only add four conditions for determining eligibility of a civil servant for his consideration for promotion to BS 22.
These four additional requirements for promotion to BS 22 listed in 2010 rules are therefore the first milestone to be crossed by a civil servant for his promotion to the highest grade in civil service.
The actual test and criterion for promotion to BS 22 envisaged in the Civil Servants Act comes next in the form of three merit indicator qualifications for promotion to BS 22 listed in the 1973 rules which the high powered promotion boards have been violating with impunity bringing to the civil service of Pakistan its present decay and deterioration.
