Fill vacancies in police department as per final seniority list: Madras High Court
Chennai: Pointing out that the police department cannot suffer endlessly without filling the promotional post, the Madras high court has directed the authorities to proceed ahead to fill all vacancies by way of preparing a final seniority list as per the existing rules, without reference to the accelerated promotions given to 757 police officers/policemen, who were part of the STF, which conducted the operation against forest brigand Veerappan.
Justice T. Raja who gave the directive, however, said, “This is subject to the result of the pending petitions”.
The judge was disposing of a batch of petitions from S. Prabakaran and others, which sought a direction to the authorities to publish immediately a fresh seniority list of the inspectors of police, deputy superintendents of police and additional superintendents of police duly prepared in accordance with the judgment of a division bench dated April 5, 2013.
Originally by a GO dated October 27, 2004, 757 STF personnel were given one stage accelerated promotion for their bravery, heroic action and gallantry for conducting a daring and intrepid operation against the forest brigand Veerappan. Subsequently, the government issued another GO dated October 3, 2007, deleting a paragraph and substituting another paragraph.
At any stage the accelerated promotion will not give the individual accelerated consequential seniority since the accelerated promotion was only for one stage, the paragraph added.
Aggrieved, when several petitions were filed, a single judge dismissed the petitions. While so the government issued a notification dated December 14, 2013, by carrying out an amendment to the special rule’s retrospective effect from March 19, 1996.
Aggrieved, other police officers have filed petitions and a single judge granted an interim stay of the notification and the matter went to a division bench, which directed the registry to place the matter before the single judge and directed the parties to maintain status quo till then.
