Court quashes IAF promotions, says process arbitrary

Casting doubt over the promotion process in the Indian Air Force, the Delhi High Court today quashed the promotions of four Air Marshals and...

Casting doubt over the promotion process in the Indian Air Force, the Delhi High Court today quashed the promotions of four Air Marshals and ordered setting up of a fresh promotion board within four weeks to reconsider their cases along with those of two Air Vice-Marshals (AVMs) wrongly denied promotions.

The order came on petitions filed by AVMs T S Chhatwal and Harish Masand, who were denied promotions to the rank of Air Marshal by the February 2003 Special Promotion Board (SPB), which promoted A D Joshi, J S Gujral, F H Major and A K Singh to Air Marshals.

A division bench directed that the fresh SPB would re-assess the comparative merit of Masand, Chhatwal and other candidates as per the 2004 promotion policy, which gave only 5 per cent weightage to board marks. Besides this, 80 per cent weightage would be given to the Appraisal Report marks for the last five years.

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The IAF said it would implement the order after ‘‘careful study’’. Terming the 2002 promotion policy, which gave 20 per cent weightage to board marks, as violative of Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution, the court quashed the policy as also the February 2003 SPB held under it.

The 2002 policy had done away with the earlier system of seniority cum fitness. Arguing for the petitioners, counsel Keshav Kaushik alleged that giving weightage, like in the 2002 policy, to factors such as leadership, personality, potential to hold responsibility of the next higher rank and employability as criteria for promotion left scope for sycophancy and was against the principle of objectivity. It was for the first time in the history of the IAF, he added, that 20 per cent marks had been at the discretion of the promotion board.

Quashing the recommendations ‘‘of the selection board held in February 2003 and all the appointments made pursuant thereto’’, the bench added that any appointments made under the 2002 policy between 2002 to February 2003 shall not be affected.

‘‘The treatment meted out to the petitioner is a classic case of indifference, high-handedness, arbitrariness, irrationality and amounts to colourful exercise of powers and manipulations to deny promotions to a meritorious officer,’’ the bench observed.

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Criticising the Air Headquarters and the then Air Officer In-charge of Personnel (AOP), the court said: ‘‘We are shocked that ways and means were devised by an officer of the rank of Air Marshal (Menon) to hide from the court what was against the Air Headquarters…If this could happen at that level, how the rule of law and the faith of the court in the affidavits filed by the government would survive?’’

Chhatwal, a world record holder in high-altitude operational flying, is a decorated officer, as is Masan.

Rapping the IAF for the whole episode, the bench said: ‘‘We must observe and hope that this kind of action…is an aberration and should not repeat…Otherwise, the morale of the officers and airmen would be adversely affected.’’