Islamabad, Dec 11: Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court (IHC) Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rahman, on Tuesday, constituted a larger bench to hear the petitions against the recommendations of the central selection board (CSB) that promoted more than one hundred bureaucrats into grade 20 and 21, in 2011.

The larger bench comprising CJ IHC, Justice Riaz Ahmad Khan and Justice Mohammed Anwar Khan Kasi would hear over a dozen petitions of the bureaucrats belonging to different occupation groups on a day-to-day basis, from Monday, December 17.

Earlier a former additional judge of the IHC Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui on November 13 had declared the recommendations of the CSB as illegal. Since November 20 was Justice Siddiqui’s last working day, so he could not sign the above order and now the matter has been fixed afresh before the court.

Bureaucrats from different occupation groups through seven petitions have adopted before the court that they were denied being promoted and superseded by their juniors without any legal cause.

The petitioners adopted that they were ignored being promoted despite the fact that there were no adverse remarks in their annual confidential reports (ACR).

They were superseded, given the fact that they were up the seniority ladder and eligible for promotion, while their service career extended over 33 years.

The petitioner alleged that the CSB by granting less marks to them had given undue benefit to some of the bureaucrats and also to some others, who had even secured less marks but were given preferential treatment and were promoted to BPS-21.

Petitioners told the court that some of the petitioners had even earned two highest Performance Evaluation Reports (PERs) for the years 2009 and 2010.

They further told the court that the PERs for the year 2011, which was available in October 2011, when the meeting of the CSB took place, had not been taken into consideration due to mala fide intentions.

The petitioners said that as per guidelines for promotion, the Departmental Promotion Committee/Central Selection Board should consider the cases of eligible Civil Servants in order of seniority and recommend a civil servant for promotion to the next higher post or recommend a civil servant for supersession.

The respondents have violated the provisions of law and the Promotion Policy and thereby violated Article 4 of the Constitution, they added.

There were neither any disciplinary nor departmental proceedings pending against the petitioners.

It is important to mention here that there are seven intra court appeals (ICA) also pending against the decision of Justice Siddiqui and the same IHC bench would take up these petitions in the coming days.