Awarding low marks to consistent top performer not justified, consider officer for promotion: AFT to Air Force

Vijay Mohan

Chandigarh, July 10

The Armed Forces Tribunal has directed the Air Force to consider a Group Captain for promotion to the rank of Air Commodore after holding that he was awarded lower marks despite consistently maintaining the top position in his annual confidential report profile.

The officer, who was commissioned in June 1992 into the Education Branch, had filed a statutory complaint against his non-empanelment by the promotion board, which was rejected by Chief of the Air Staff.

He had contended that despite being a deserving candidate for grant of promotion, he was denied the same arbitrarily and his statutory complaint was also rejected in a brazen manner with malafide intention.

Six officers were considered by the selection board for promotion against three vacancies of Air Commodore in the Education Branch in 2019.According to the petitioner, there would not have been any promotion board for the next five years in the Education Branch for promotion to the rank of Air Commodore as no retirement was expected in the normal course up to the year 2024 and no additional vacancies were likely to come up.

The officer had submitted that the promotion board has brought down his profile by not awarding discretionary board marks judiciously and objectively, which resulted in him being placed at the fourth position despite having the highest annual report (AR) marks.

“It appears that though the petitioner was at number one in AR, which holds 95 percent weightage, yet he was downgraded by board members just to benefit other candidates by awarding higher marks. Therefore, contention of the applicant that he was awarded less marks by the board members seems to be justified,” the Tribunal’s bench comprising Justice Umesh Chandra Srivastava and Vice Admiral Atul Kumar Jain observed after perusing the records.

The bench also held that despite the alleged setbacks of a ‘dip’ in the petitioner’s performance at Sainik School, Rewari, he maintained his number one position in AR status among the six officers in the zone of consideration for a period of 10 years.

Ruling that the action of the board members in awarding low points to the petitioner was not justified, the bench set aside the order rejecting his statutory complaint with directions to award him board marks judiciously and consider his promotion to the post of Air Commodore on the basis of his seniority.