Row over ineligible vs eligible ACFs for DFO promotion

Nagpur: A tug-of-war for promotion from assistant conservator of forests (ACFs) to divisional forest officers (DFOs) has ensued in the Maharashtra forest department between eligible and ineligible candidates.
While the PCCF’s office is considering the ‘ineligible’ lot, over 28 eligible ACFs clamouring for promotions took the battle to the principal secretary (forest) Milind Mhaiskar’s court demanding justice.
“For direct ACFs, the criteria for promotion is 3 years of probation and 3 years of regular service. But ACFs who are in service for a long time become eligible the day they are promoted. The department promotion committee (DPC) meeting is slated for Monday and the seniority list prepared is as per the rules,” said APCCF (personnel) Maheep Gupta.
However, direct ACFs said, “We comply with all norms for promotion but candidates who got ad hoc promotion from the post of RFO to ACF and whose promotion is not even regularized by MPSC till date and moreover are junior to us are being considered.”
Promotion rules are being questioned by the aggrieved lot. “Promotion rules are misinterpreted. As per the ACF Recruitment Rules, 1965 — on successful completion of 2 years’ training — direct recruited ACFs were posted on probation and their training period was not considered as service period.” they said.
They added that ACF Recruitment Rules, 1965, were superseded in 1998 after which 2 years’ probation period of directly recruited ACFs and one-year field training is considered as service period. On a petition filed by some aggrieved ACFs, on September 16, 2016, the MAT upheld this view and later the state also agreed to consider training period as service period and allowed all the related benefits by issuing a GR on August 14, 2018. Based on this GR, the final seniority list was released on March 7, 2019.
This seniority list was challenged in the high court, Aurangabad bench, in which state’s general administrative department (GAD) advised to rectify DFO Promotion Rules-1984. “However, the opinion of GAD was deliberately not put before the HC and a civil application was filed by the department requesting the court to elevate promotee ACFs and exclude us as our batch had not completed 3 years of regular service after passing departmental exam. On this department stand, the court lifted the stay on the promotion process on August 23, 2019,” the ACFs said.
Accordingly, the department elevated promotee ACFs as DFOs though they were junior as per the seniority list. Those promoted as DFOs were not regularized by the government on the post of ACFs. Department also promoted 18 newly recruited ACFs as DFOs without rectifying rules.
“One woman officer from Chandrapur was termed as ineligible by the departmental promotion committee (DPC) but was still given promotion. However, the department has taken a different stand against the batch of 28 ACFs,” they said.
The seniority list of ACF cadre has not been regularized since 2000. However, the department went on including these promotee ACFs in the seniority list and has given promotions to the post of DFO and even awarded IFS to them.