IAF asked to review promotion policy

In a major embarrassment for the outgoing Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy, the Delhi High Court today quashed the decisions taken by the Special Promotions Board (SPB) of the Air Force held in February 2003 in which two Air Vice-Marshals, TS Chhatwal and Harish Masand, were wrongly denied promotion to the rank of Air Marshal.

Experts say a cancellation of promotion orders at such a high level in the IAF hierarchy has happened for the first time in history. The court order comes at a time when Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has admitted that the trend of a disproportionately large number of instance of Service officers going to court on promotion issues was worrying.

At one of his first press conferences, Mukherjee said he was studying how the promotion-related grievances could be sorted out and settled within the Services so that dirty linen was not washed out in the open.

Today's orders, which were issued by a Division Bench of Justice Vijender Jain and Justice HR Malhotra, also quashed the controversial 2002 promotion policy of the Air Force, directed the Air Force authorities to convene another SPB in four weeks to reconsider Chhatwal and Masand as per the 2004 Air Force promotion policy.

Under the 2002 promotion policy, an officer was judged on the basis of 80 per cent marks as reflected in his appraisal reports and 20 per cent board marks.

Before this, the "minimum performance criteria", as it was known, was a composite of merit, vacancy and seniority, applied to officers of the rank of Air Commodore and above.

But the 2002 policy was redrafted for the benefit of "deep selection" and the 20 per cent marks awarded by the board came to be known in the IAF as the discretionary quota of the Chief of Air Staff.

The defence ministry in 2004, reduced the weightage of marks to be given by the board to just 5 per cent. The court in its orders today, quashed the 2002 promotion policy as being arbitrary and directed that the fresh promotion board be held under the new policy.

Earlier, Chhatwal was denied a routine one-year extension in December last year but the air force agreed to grant him extension after the Delhi high court summoned the original files and found that his appraisal report was fudged.Then defence secretary Subir Dutta had to apologise to the court for the alterations in the files.

With this order, promotions of four Air Marshals also stands quashed and their cases will be reconsidered along with those of Chhatwal and Masand.

The Air Marshals adversely affected by the court's orders are: AD Joshi, JS Gujral, FH Major and AK Singh.