ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has ruled that the settled principle of public administration requires every sanctioned post to serve a functional need of the state and must be filled within a reasonable time after becoming vacant.
A two-member SC bench, comprising Justice Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, set aside the judgment of the Federal Service Tribunal dated January 26, 2022, after accepting appeals filed by petitioners in a promotion case.
The petitioners, including Naeem Khan Niazi, Muhammad Noman, Iftikhar Naseeb Khan, and Muhammad Shafiq, had challenged the Tribunal’s judgment, naming the Secretary of the Ministry of Interior as a respondent. “Vacancies left unaddressed foster ad-hocism, informal delegation, and opacity, which in turn open the door to nepotism and favouritism,” stated the five-page judgment authored by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah.
The court noted that such practices not only undermine the principles of merit and transparency but also violate the guarantees of equality before the law and equal protection under Articles 4 and 25, as well as the constitutional mandate of Article 27, which prohibits discrimination in appointments to the service of Pakistan.
“Nepotism and favouritism strike at the heart of constitutional morality: they transform public office from a position of trust into a tool of patronage, thereby weakening institutional integrity and eroding public confidence in the fairness of the system,” the judgment read.
The court emphasized that public institutions are not the private preserves of those who manage them but are repositories of public trust, and their strength lies in the timely and transparent deployment of sanctioned human resources.
“Failure to fill vacancies without lawful justification not only diminishes institutional performance but also undermines the confidence of civil servants and the public alike,” the court held.
After accepting the appeals, the court set aside the impugned judgment dated January 26, 2022, passed by the Tribunal. According to the judgment, the petitioners, who were Sub-Inspectors at the time, argued that their promotion to the post of Inspector (BPS-16) should have been considered from August 2015, when 25 vacancies for the post of Inspector arose.
“It is an admitted position between the parties that in August 2015, there were 25 vacancies for the post of Inspectors. However, due to pending litigation where stay orders were granted by the high court and subsequently by the Federal Service Tribunal, the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) could not be held until October 10, 2017,” the judgment stated.
The court noted that the stay orders were issued because the Federal Service Tribunal, through its decision dated April 8, 2015, mandated that the seniority list of Sub-Inspectors, including women and men officers, be combined. This issue was resolved by the Anomaly Committee, and a consolidated seniority list was issued on April 3, 2017, with the stay orders finally vacated on July 24, 2017.
“It is a well-settled principle, recognised in our jurisprudence and consistently affirmed in comparative public law, that a civil servant’s claim to promotion crystallises the moment a vacancy within their quota arises, provided they meet the prescribed eligibility criteria,” the court held.
The court further stated that, at that stage, a corresponding duty is imposed on the competent authority to consider the officer’s case fairly and promptly. Administrative indecision, internal disputes, or managerial laxity cannot be used as excuses to defer the process once a substantive vacancy exists.
The court ruled that the fair and lawful course is to reckon the petitioners’ promotion from the date the vacancies first arose in August 2015, despite the intervening delay.
