SANTOKH SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS order will dispose of the three above captioned writ petitions as common questions of law and fact are involved in all of them which can be conveniently disposed of by a common order. The facts are taken from CWP No.14512 of 2013 for convenience.

(2.) THE petitioner's ad hoc promotion as Assistant Sub Inspector in Punjab Police with effect from 23rd May, 1992 vide order dated 1st June, 1992 was faulted and his ad hoc rank was withdrawn vide order dated 6th May, 2000 converting his status on the promotional post on own rank and pay (ORP). This resulted from a fall out of the directions issued by the Division Bench of this Court in a batch of cases including CWP No.13788 of 1997, titled SI Swaran Singh and another v. State of Punjab with judgment delivered on 21st April, 1998, the extract of which direction are reproduced in paragraph 2 of the preliminary submissions in the reply by way of counter affidavit filed by the State. The petitioner did not agitate the reversion before a court of law or before the bureaucrat. Punjab Government framed a policy on 29th November, 2012 [R -1] granting promotional benefits to the persons who had done work on the anti -terrorist front. The policy laid down guidelines to deal with requests coming from the police officials for giving them the benefits which were devised to be dealt in the manner prescribed.

(3.) THE petitioner's was informed that his case did not fall within the terms of the policy for want of satisfying conditions (i) and (ii) which conferred special benefits to officials who were injured in anti -terrorist operations and were not given any service benefit on account of it. Also, officials who had lost their family members at the hands of terrorists who had not been given any service benefits thus far. A yardstick was laid down that in order to maintain uniformity in implementation, the benefits given in the past to such similarly placed officials may be kept in mind and their cases be dealt with accordingly and appropriate benefits may be given to those who fell in the terms of the policy. The case of the petitioner for retention of ad hoc rank of ASI, at par with an ASI (OPR), namely, Dilbagh Singh and 9 others were not found similar since in those cases, restoration of ad hoc rank was ordered in the year 2000 with the approval of the Council of Ministers but the petitioner did not express any grievance of it and accepted the position, till after over a decade, in the present petition. In the meanwhile, the Supreme Court issued directions on 12th April, 2004 in SLP No.13389 of 1998 in Paras Kumar and others v. Ram Charan and others which read as follows: -