KARACHI: SHC allows engineer to attend Nipa course
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, Sept 24: A division bench of the Sindh High Court has held that the requirement for passing Nipa courses do not appear to be applicable when a civil servant is seeking promotion within his own line of specialization, but they would continue to apply in case he is expecting to be promoted against a general post.
The bench, comprising Justice Sabihuddin Ahmad and Justice Ali Aslam Jaferi, observed this while allowing a petition of Ali Akbar Shaikh who had made the Federation, Secretary Establishment Division and Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) respondents in the matter.
The petitioner, who was represented by Mohammed Nawaz Shaikh, advocate, is a superintending engineer, in BS-19, in Pakistan PWD and had applied for appearing in a Nipa entrance test in April this year.
It may be observed that for the purpose of promotion to BS-20 a civil servant is normally required to pass a training course held at the National Institute of Public Administration (Nipa) and selection for such courses is made on the basis of entrance examinations.
Conditions prescribed for passing the entrance examination as contained in the office memorandum dated 8th May 2001 issued by the Establishment Division contemplated that candidates would be required to attained 50 per cent marks to successfully qualify the Nipa entrance examination.
The court however observed that it appeared that this condition was somewhat modified by the memorandum dated July 28, 2001, issued pursuant to a letter from the respondent No 3 that a candidate would be required to obtain 50pc marks in each of the individual papers.
The standing counsel pointed out that a public notice dated 8th June 2001 prescribed 40pc passing marks in individual papers was published by the respondent No 3 on 17th June 2001. Therefore, by a clarification dated January 7, 2002 from the Joint Secretary Establishment Division, it was stated that the notification dated 9th July 2001 should not be applied to candidates whose cases had already been processed prior to the issuance of the notification.
The court held that it was not disputed that the petitioner who appeared in the entrance examination in April 2002 obtained 58 marks in one paper and 44 in another. In other words, he obtained more than 50pc marks in the aggregate but could not achieve this threshold in each paper. Consequently, he was declared to have failed.
The petitioner had, however, urged that some candidates who had appeared in the test in November 2001 were declared having passed upon merely obtaining 50pc marks in the aggregate and not in every individual paper and as such he has been discriminated against.
The court, however, noted that there appeared to be some confusion as to the minimum requirements for passing examination, and there seemed to be force in the petitioner’s contention that the Public Service Commission was not competent to undertake the entrance test or prescribed standards for passing them.
It was argued that under the FPSC Ordinance 1977, a Commission was only concerned with recruitments of civil servants, not with terms and conditions of existing civil servants.
Ziauddin Nasir, the standing counsel, however drew the court’s attention to the text of the FPSC (Amendment) Ordinance 2002 published on 3rd September 2002, wherein clause “c” had been added to section 7(1) defining the functions of the Commission.
The standing counsel however candidly conceded that the aforesaid Ordinance could not be given retrospective effect, and it was therefore quite clear that no conditions could be prescribed by the respondent No 3 regarding the marks required for passing the examination at the relevant time.
The petitioner’s counsel Mohammed Nawaz Shaikh also contended that he belonged to the technical and specialist cadre, and therefore the requirement to pass a Nipa course should not have been applied to his case in terms of para-IV of the guidelines for departmental promotion committee/Central Selection Boards laid down on page 287 of Esta Code (2001 Edition), though this question did not, strictly speaking, arose in this matter.
The petition was accordingly allowed, and the respondent No 1 was directed to accommodate the petitioner for undergoing a training course in the forthcoming batch.
