HC upholds Punjab DGP Dinkar’s appointment

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 6

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today overturned the Central Administrative Tribunal’s judgment to uphold the appointment of 1987-batch IPS officer Dinkar Gupta as Punjab Director-General of Police.

The Bench also upheld UPSC’s Draft Guidelines-2009 followed 28 times across India while appointing DGPs. All DGPs would have to been ousted as fallout of the CAT judgment, in case of a contrary view by the Bench — at least this is what was argued. Setting aside Gupta’s appointment as the DGP, the tribunal had about 10 months ago held the guidelines to be invalid.

But the HC Bench of Justice Jaswant Singh and Justice Sant Parkash ruled that the guidelines — on procedure and modalities for selecting panel for DGP’s appointment — were not opposed to, and in violation of, the SC direction in Prakash Singh’s case on police reforms. “The tribunal has exceeded its jurisdiction regarding judicial review of the selection process by transgressing in the expert domain superimposing its own opinion and is against the settled law on the subject,” the Bench ruled.

The Bench passed the orders on appeals by Gupta and the state through Advocate-General Atul Nanda, Additional Advocate-General Rameeza Hakeem and senior advocate Maninder Singh. The UPSC was represented by Additional Solicitor-General Aman Lekhi and Alka Chatrath.

It further ruled the guidelines could not be held to be lacking authenticity or legality and the findings so recorded by the CAT were erroneous.