LHC stays removal of 1,173 FESCO employees

A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) headed by acting Chief Justice (CJ) Sh Azmat Saeed on Tuesday granted interim stay order against removal of 1,173 employees of the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) whose appointments were declared illegal by LHC’s single bench (SB) in July 2010.
The FESCO employees who had allegedly been recruited on political basis had filed an intra-court appeal (ICA) against the verdict of Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah through which the judge had declared their appointments illegal and void. The judge also directed for fresh appointments on merit by inviting applications from qualified hopefuls.
Advocate A K Dogar pleaded the case of the FESCO employees and got them stay orders till the decision of the case. The division bench (DB) of acting CJ suspended the SB’s order and stayed the matter in favour of the employees, seeking reply from the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Private) Limited (PEPCO) and federal government till the next hearing on September 28.
Case History: The appointments were declared illegal by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah after hearing 49 identical petitions challenging the appointment of over a thousand candidates allegedly at the behest of Federal Water and Power Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf in violation of the prescribed criteria.
Then petitioners, including Iffat Sardar and Anwar Ali, submitted that they applied for the posts of assistant linemen, meter readers, commercial assistants and naib qasids advertised by the FESCO in November 2008. The posts were open for candidates with Faisalabad, Toba Tek Singh, Khushab, Sargodha and Mianwali domiciles.
The petitioners said being permanent residents of the said districts, they filed applications for the posts but the same were rejected by the authorities concerned without disclosing any reason. They said the candidates who were appointed were not residents of the said districts; instead most of them belonged to Chakwal and Gujjar Khan – the minister’s electoral constituency.
The petitioners alleged that the minister accommodated his supporters by offering them jobs in violation of merit and ignoring the deserving candidates. Candidates who did not even pass the written test and interview were appointed, they said, requesting the court to set aside all the appointments.
When the judge summoned the record of these appointments, it transpired that the company had not maintained a complete record of the new appointments.
Setting aside the appointments in his short order, the judge issued notices on 17 more petitions pertaining to appointments made against other posts.
It may be recalled that on May 6, Justice Farrukh Irfan Khan had cancelled 548 appointments at the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (GEPCO), also made allegedly at the behest of Raja Pervez Ashraf. The judge had observed that the appointments were made in violation of rules and regulations, and directed the authorities concerned to fill the vacancies strictly on merit.