AFT orders promotion of Colonel in Survey of India as Brigadier, Major General
The Armed Forces Tribunal said the low medical fitness of the Colonel did not matter because he was not working in Army but in the Survey of India.
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AFT said the low medical fitness did not matter because Colonel Amardeep Singh was not working in Army but in Survey of India. (File) The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has directed the Army to grant substantive ranks of Brigadier and Major General to a Colonel who is permanently seconded to the Survey of India, though the Army claimed he belonged to the low medical category of fitness.
Acting on a petition filed by Colonel Amardeep Singh, an officer of the Corps of Engineers, the AFT bench of Justice Rajendra Menon and Lt Gen C P Mohanty has held that the Army has wrongly denied promotion to the petitioner based on medical category. There have been numerous cases where officers of the Survey of India have been promoted to higher military ranks despite being in low medical category, the tribunal said.
AFT said the low medical fitness did not matter because he was not working in Army but in Survey of India.
The petitioner was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers in Army in June 1997 and was promoted to the rank of Colonel, while being permanently seconded to Survey of India. Aggrieved by the non-grant of substantive promotion to the rank of Brigadier and Major General, he approached the AFT seeking redress to his grievance.
The petitioner contended that he was to be promoted to the substantive promotion to the rank of Brigadier with effect from 12.06.2020 and rank of Major General upon completion of 25 years of service with effect from 12.06.2022.
In March 2005, the petitioner was permanently seconded to the Survey of India with the approval of Ministry of Science and Technology. Survey of India is an organisation which has two streams inter alia Civil and Defence for military purposes, and after being seconded, the petitioner continued to be promoted from time to time till the rank of Colonel.
Regarding the non-promotion of the applicant to the rank of Brigadier, the counsel of the petitioner argued that the Deputy Surveyor General vide letters dated 22.05.2020, 06.07.2020 and 03.08.2020 intimated the Army that the applicant shall be completing 23 years of commissioned service on 12.06.2020 and is entitled to the substantive rank of Brigadier in terms of Survey of India (Group ‘A’ posts) Service Rules, 1989 and regulations of Ministry of Defence on the subject.
In response to these letters the Army passed promotion order in 2020 in respect of three officers but the name of the petitioner was excluded, saying he was in a non-promotable category.
The counsel also argued that on numerous occasions in the past several officers have been granted substantive promotions despite being in low medical category.
The counsel argued that the policies regulating promotions to the regular Army officers are not applicable to officers like the petitioner who are permanently seconded to the Survey of India.
Therefore, adding a condition of the medical category for conferment of the rank when such conferment of rank is only symbolic, and since such officers are merely kept in the supernumerary strength for the purpose of Rank, is not in order.
The AFT bench noted that the rank is peculiar to the three services of the Armed Forces which implies that the substantive posts in the Survey of India are supernumerary and the promotion of the officers seconded to the Survey of India like the applicant is not against the Army vacancies.
“Furthermore, we cannot shy away from the fact that as a matter of past precedence, several seconded officers to the Survey of India have been granted substantive ranks of Brigadier as well as Major General, despite being placed under low medical category as has been clarified by the Surveyor General’s letter dated 05.11.2020,” the bench noted in its orders giving relief to the petitioner.
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