Denied promotion, SIs move court

The Madras High Court today allowed a writ petition filed by the 18 sub-inspectors in southern districts seeking quashing of a police order revising a 28-year-old seniority system resulting in many juniors getting elevated as Inspectors.
Justice K B K Vasuki of the Madurai bench of the court directed the Inspector General of Police (South Zone) to promote 18 SIs as Inspectors with all other benefits with retrospective effect from June 12, 2009.
The matter pertains to an order of the Inspector General of Police (South Zone), and DIG of Police Ramanathapuram as per which 16 juniors to the petitioners were promoted as Inspectors on June 12, 2009.

The petitioners including A Muniyammal, submitted that they were recruited as Grade II constable in 1981. Then they were sent for training in three batches on different dates, and seniority was based on the respective marks obtained in the examination.
Further, the seniority was determined for the first batch of candidates among the batch itself, and it was done likewise for the other two batches. Their seniority was maintained like that from 1981, and in 1996 they were promoted as Head Constables, and in 2003 as sub-inspectors, they said.
The problem arose for them when the IG combined all the three batches based on marks obtained by them in the final examination in Police Recruitment School and made it into one batch irrespective of the date of appointment, for promotion as Inspector.

Instead of continuing with the batch-wise seniority, the DIG and IG had combined all the batches together to fix the seniority based on marks obtained by each of them.
The revision of seniority by the impugned proceedings of the DIG and IG was counter to the Tamil Nadu Subordinate Service rules, they said, adding that though the error was pointed out to the IG, he rejected the same and placed 16 juniors as Inspectors.
On the other hand, all the constables had been given only batch-wise seniority promotion. The 16 persons who had been promoted out of turn were their juniors for 28 years. This fact also had not been considered by the officials, they submitted.