The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of law-abiding civil servants who are put under undue influence by the ruling clouts to follow their toe lines and their resistance can lead to frequent transfers and so-called disciplinary actions.
The court on Monday observed that it was noticed that whenever the officers/officials/civil servants follow the lawful orders, they had to face a lot of resistance invariably and several times they were humiliated by their superior immediately ordering their transfers from one place to another. The court said posting them as officers on special duty (OSD) by initiating baseless proceedings of disciplinary nature against them, in as much as transfer orders were issued by the concerned competent authorities disallowing them to complete their tenure period, without adhering to the rules and regulations.
A three-member bench of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez resumed hearing of a human rights case initiated on an application of Anita Turab, a DMG officer, related to slapping incident of a polling officer during by-elections on PS-53 Tando Muhammad Khan by a disqualified candidate of PPP Waheeda Shah. The bench on the stance of applicant in its order directed the secretary of Establishment Division, as well as chief secretaries and ICT chief commissioner to submit their comments and also to suggest ways and means to protect the fundamental rights of the civil servants throughout in the country, as enshrined under Article 9 read with Article 18 of the constitution because it was the considered opinion of this court that the persons, who were in the Civil Service of Pakistan ‘are bound to follow the lawful orders’. The bench took serious exception to such scenario by saying that it had also been noticed that frequent transfers, postings and suspensions etc; take place in different departments contrary to the law, rule and regulations. While in Waheeda Shah’s case, the bench directed the trial court and the Election Commission of Pakistan to proceed with the matters in accordance with law, without being influenced in any manner from the instant proceedings when it was apprised that a case was under trial before the Civil Judge/Judicial Magistrate-II, Tando Muhammad Khan against accused Syeda Waheed Mohsin Shah.
The bench also issued orders to inspectors general of Police and the chief secretaries to immediately revert all the shoulder promotions given to police officials out of merit. Directives were given after the bench was apprised by Ghulam Haider Jamali, deputy inspector general police, Mirpur Khas, about the status of Syed Irfan Ali Shah, SDPO, who was present during incident, that he was an inspector, but due to a shortage of officers, had been posted as SDPO. The bench noted in its order high authorities should immediately take action and all police officers/officials to whom shoulder promotions had been given should be demoted to their original ranks and if there was shortage of the officers/officials, the relevant rules should be followed for promoting them to the next higher grades purely on merit.
