A bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed and Justice Ghulam Rabbani was hearing a petition requesting the court to declare the promotions illegal.

On Sept 4 last year the prime minister had reshuffled almost the entire top brass of bureaucracy, replacing over a dozen federal secretaries and announcing changes in other ministries by promoting several grade 21 civil servants to grade 22. Those ignored in the promotion filed the petition.

At the last hearing, the Supreme Court had ordered the establishment division to issue notices to the promoted civil servants so that if anyone of them wanted to submit his perspective on the promotions he could do so within a week.

Those who appeared before the court were Social Welfare Secretary Athar Tahir, Additional Secretary Information Technology Naguibullah Malik, Minority Affairs Secretary Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, Interior Secretary Maj (retd) Qamar Zaman, Special Education Secretary Imtiaz Hussain Qazi, Election Commission Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan, Punjab Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khan Khosa, Shahid Rashid and Javed Iqbal.

All of them pleaded that they had an unblemished service record, had never been superseded or overlooked in previous promotions and had never used political influence to move up the service ladder.

They contended that a reversal of their promotion would cause considerable damage to their reputation and career and it would appear that they were not promoted on merit.

Thirteen officers submitted written statements. The 10 officers who appeared in the court belonged to the District Management Group.

The case was adjourned till Feb 15.

The promoted officers are Mohammad Zafeer Abbasi, Jawed Akhtar, Inamullah Khan, Khalid Idrees, Neelam S. Ali, Batool Iqbal Qureshi, Ahmad Mahmood Zahid, Abdul Shafiq, Ghulam Rasool Ahpan, Gul Mohammad Rind, M. Athar Tahir, Naguibullah Malik, Asif Bajwa, Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, Qamar Zaman, Imtiaz Hussain Kazi, Rukhsana Saleem, Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan, Shahid Rashid, Nasir Mahmood Khan Khosa, Kamran Lashari, Javed Iqbal, Junaid Iqbal Chaudhry, Sohail Ahmad, Mohammad Sami Saeed, Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, Javed Mahmood, Ghulam Ali Shah Pasha, Ahmed Bakhsh Lehri, Nargis Sethi, Khalid Khattak, M. Haroon Shaukat, Zamir Akram, Jalil Abbas, M. Masood Khan, Azhar Ali Farooqi, Khalid Farooq, Syed Shabbir Ahmad, Tariq Masood Khosa, Javed Iqbal, Dr Wasim Kausar, Tariq Saleem, Javed Noor, Syed Javed Ali Shah Bokhari, Javed Arif, Mohammad Ayub Khan Tarin, Ghalibud Din, Asif Usman, Anisul Hassnain Musavi, Agha Sarwar Raza Qazilbash, Tariq Iqbal Puri, Mansoor Suhail and Moinul Islam Bukhari.