HYDERABAD: A day after urging the High Court to jettison Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT)’s order allowing Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar to continue in Telangana, the Union government on Friday informed the court that all the contentions raised by the CS before the CAT were false.
A bench headed by Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and S. Nanda resumed hearing of the writ petition filed by the Secretary, Department of Personal Training (DOPT) Government of India, seeking a stay on the CAT Hyderabad bench order.
Additional Solicitor General Suryakaran Reddy, representing DOPT, argued that Somesh Kumar has alleged before the CAT that the Pratyush Sinha Committee had framed guidelines for allocating All India Service officers to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States to gain personal benefit as the daughter of Pratyush Sinha, who is also an AIS officer had the benefit of getting the State of her choice.
The Chief Secretary faulted the entire Pratyush Sinha Committee guidelines, which are framed for equitable distribution of AIS officers among both the States.The ASG further informed the court that Somesh Kumar did not get the benefit of swapping as there was no officer in the list to enable him to swap, as PK Mohanty, the only officer with whom he could swap, retired much earlier.
Somesh Kumar challenged the non-inclusion of PK Mohanty in the list due to which he lost the opportunity of swapping. As per the rules, swapping is not permissible with a retired officer. The ASG further argued that All India Service Rules mandated that any candidate who is selected should work in the State to which he is allotted and he has no right to ask for allocation to the State of his choice.
The Supreme Court had repeatedly held that an All India Service officer should work wherever he is allotted. The CAT bench ought to have remanded back this issue of allocation to the DOPT for consideration and it should not have directly passed orders allocating Somesh Kumar to Telangana State.
After hearing the arguments of the ASG at length, the court asked him to point out the error in the CAT order allocating Somesh Kumar to Telangana and adjourned the hearing to Monday.
CAT bench should have sent issue to DOPT, says ASG
The Supreme Court had repeatedly held that an All India Service officer should work wherever he is allotted. The CAT bench ought to have remanded back this issue of allocation to the DOPT for consideration and it should not have directly passed orders allocating Somesh Kumar to Telangana State, the ASG told the court