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Union of India & Anr. v. DIG K.P.S. Raghuvanshi & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 1294Decided 11 May 2017
Civil Appeal Nos. 13776-13777 of 2015
Justice Arun Mishra · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

DIG K.P.S. Raghuvanshi of the Indian Coast Guard challenged his non-selection for promotion to Inspector General before the Delhi High Court, alleging the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) wrongly applied a newly framed selection policy (CGO 02/09) instead of the earlier one (CGO 02/05), and that his Annual Confidential Report had been reviewed by an officer who had not supervised him for the mandatory 90-day period. The High Court agreed with him, set aside the DPC's decision, and attributed mala fide intent to the Coast Guard's policy change, suggesting it was engineered to favour another officer. The Union of India appealed to the Supreme Court against that finding, while Raghuvanshi filed a cross-appeal seeking further relief.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the High Court had misdirected itself in attributing mala fides to the promulgation of CGO 02/09, finding instead that the policy change was made to align Coast Guard promotion criteria with instructions from the Department of Personnel and Training and had been in the pipeline since 2005, not engineered suddenly to benefit any particular officer. It found that all officers in Raghuvanshi's batch, including the one allegedly favoured, had been evaluated under the same criteria, and that Raghuvanshi had simply been placed lower in the merit list on a fair comparative assessment. The Court allowed the Union of India's appeals and set aside the High Court's order, while dismissing Raghuvanshi's own appeal. It nonetheless directed that the allegations he had made against senior officers not be held against him, and that his good service record be considered sympathetically for future promotion in accordance with merit.

Lesson Learnt

Courts will not presume bad faith in a government department's policy change merely because it coincides with the career interests of certain officers, unless there is concrete evidence the change was engineered to favour a specific individual, a facially uniform and consistently applied promotion criterion will be upheld.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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