SC drops contempt proceedings against Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday dropped contempt proceedings against Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla for allegedly not maintaining status quo on reservation in promotion during his tenure at DoPT and granted adhoc promotion to 4734 babus in central secretariat service.
A bench of Chief Justice U U Lalit and S Ravindra Bhat said that ad hoc promotion was done on the basis of opinion of Attorney General K K Venugopal who had suggested that promotion could be granted subject to the final outcome of the case and without impinging upon the right of other employees.
The apex court had issued notice on a contempt petition filed by a group of aggrieved officials and agreed to examine petition against Bhalls after advocate Kumar Parimal brought to court's notice its earlier order when it had expressly turned down the government's plea to allow it to promote the officers during the pendency of the case.
Kumar had submitted that SC on April 15, 2019 had passed an order directing the government to maintain the status quo as to the promotion of the officers and it rejected DoPT's application for permission to grant ad-hoc promotion in July last year.
The Attorney General contended that promotion was done as there was lots of resentment among employees as they were not promoted in the last six years and it was an ad hoc promotion. He said that no case of contempt was made out against Bhalla.
Agreeing with Venugopal's submission, the bench said, "We are not going to hold him guilty for contempt of court" and disposed of the contempt petitions.
In an affidavit filed in the apex court, Bhalla told the court that adhoc promotion was necessary as a large number of vacancies was affecting the governance and functioning of various departments and pleaded the court to dismiss the contempt proceedings filed against him.
Responding to the allegations, the Home Secretary in his affidavit said, "The court may be pleased to appreciate that the adhoc promotions effected on December 11, 2020 was to address the large number of vacancies seriously affecting governance and the efficiency of functioning of the various departments of government and even after review of the Under Secretary select lists from 2004 to 2011, the officers appointed as Directors on adhoc basis have found place in the Director Select Lists as per their eligibility."