D S PANDEY Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner was commissioned in the Indian Army in June 1982 into 4/A Gorkha Regiment. Since his commissioning, petitioner attended various professional courses and according to him, he did consistently well and achieved highest possible grading. Despite petitioner achieving high grading because of his hard work and successfully completing the course, he was found unfit even for first rank of Lt. Colonel by Selection Boards held in year 1998, 1999 & 2000.

(2.) Petitioner contended that while gleaning through the possible reasons for his supersession, he has come to know that his supersession to the rank of Lt. Colonel was due to his subjective recording of ACR/ICR for the period 1993-95. Petitioner's plea is that he was never warned verbally or in writing by any of his superiors for any shortcomings nor was he charged of any indiscipline at any stage. He has all along been obedient, sincere and an honest officer. He feels that his supersession was based on the ACRs of June, 1993 to June, 1995 which emanated from bias and vindictiveness. According to him, unnatural variance between pen picture and the points given in personal/demonstrative qualities in his ACRs for those years was indicative of bias requiring no further proof.

(3.) To substantiate and support the allegation of bias and prejudice, petitioner contended that on his posting after September, 1993 on Indo-China border in inhospitable terrain, he was asked to re-write standing order for war which was last written in 1971. Though writing or updating standing order for war was a momentous task, however, no material was supplied to him to carry out this momentous task and the demand of the petitioner to avail him the facility of library and other material relevant and necessary for updating standing order for war, was not liked by his initiating officer and this was construed as not obeying the order by him. He had raised the point of equitable distribution of workload and hardship caused to persons under him in a company Commander conference, as this had made some of the Army personnel vocal and restless which was not at all liked by his initiating officer. The petitioner also imputed bias to his initiating officer on account of his questioning the professional competence of Capt. Tapan Singh (Adjutant) of the battalion who subsequently deserted the service and who was surprisingly rated as outstanding by both respondents no.3 & 4. He also attributed malafide to respondent no.3 who had required to manage a false certificate pertaining to the wife and children of respondent no.3 which was categorically demanded by him.