Panel asks govt to review AIG’s promotion case

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, August 22

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has asked the Punjab government to review the case of promotion of Davinder Kumar Sidhu, AIG (Jails), and consider him to be an officer holding the rank of IG since 2007.

The commission, in its order dated August 2, has asked the Additional Chief Secretary (Home Affairs and Justice, Jail Branch) and ADGP (Prisons) IPS Sahota to take action and submit a reply within 30 days.

Sidhu had petitioned the panel in 2012 claiming that he was being discriminated against and that officers junior to him were promoted.

Sahota confirmed that his department had received the orders and that they were looking into them.

Sidhu said he was appointed DSP (Jails) in 1990 and during his service of nearly 28 years he had been regularly bypassed while giving promotions while junior officers from general categories were promoted.

The officer, in his petition, added that for the years 1999-2000, 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 his annual confidential reports (ACR) were downgraded without offering any cogent reason.

“The authorities have regularly discriminated against me just because I belong to the Scheduled Castes category. On many occasions I tried to make my seniors see reason and logic but to no avail. In 2007-2008, my ACR was downgraded by two levels without assigning any convincing reason. According to rules, an officer’s ACR can be downgraded only by one level but in my case it was downgraded by two levels,” said Sidhu.

The commission noted that “the officer has been chargesheeted out of grudge without adopting the proper procedure. This was done just to delay his promotion with the intention to promote officers of the general category who were junior to him.”

The commission has also recommended the dropping of chargesheets and punishments and correction of ACRs.