Delhi High Court gives relief to Brigadier whose Annual Confidential Reports were wrongly expunged by Army HQs

The bench has found that the MS branch did not follow the guidelines that have been issued while expunging certain ACRs of the petitioner which were found to be inflationary in their perception.

As per the guidelines issued by the MS Branch dated October 14, 2013, all confidential reports received in the MS Branch are subjected to internal assessment in order to ensure that the same are technically valid and objective in reporting so that necessary and timely corrective actions can be undertaken to resolve the inconsistencies, if any.

The counsel for the Union of India submitted that to conduct internal assessments, the confidential reports are separated for a detailed examination to find out if they suffer from ‘Technical Defects’ or ‘Assessment Variations’.

“The confidential reports are considered to be inflated assessments where the award of ‘9’ points in the ‘Box Grading’ is given without an adequate justification in the pen picture, hence indicating an inflationary reporting and inconsistency, thus, will be put through a detailed scrutiny,” the counsel added.

The high court, however, found that the procedure followed by the MS branch in this case was flawed.

“The guidelines further provide that in order to check if an assessment is inconsistent, being inflated, if the ‘9’ points in the box grading are without an adequate justification in the pen picture the same indicates it to be an inflated reporting.

“Therefore, it is necessary to note the relevant pen picture. Upon perusal of the original record, it is found that the pen picture by the Initiating Office (IO) not only justifies and is commensurate with his box grading but is also in consonance with the pen picture as endorsed by the Reviewing Officer (RO),” the bench said.

The bench also found that in another ACR, the MS branch expunged the box grading of the petitioner but retained the figurative assessments. “Therefore, in our considered view, once the respondents found the assessment by the RO in Box Grading as ‘subjective’ and ‘inconsistent’, they could not have expunged only the Box Grading while retaining the figurative assessment by the RO,” the bench said. Here the petitioner had been given a higher overall grading (box grading) while his figurative assessment on various parameters was lower than the box grading.

The bench has struck down the ruling of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) which had dismissed the petition of the Brigadier in September 2023, set aside the ACRs that were expunged without following due process, and directed that the Army give whatever relief the petitioner now is entitled to with regard to consideration for promotion.