ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (APP):The Supreme Court has ruled that a Service Tribunal cannot assume the role of the executive by striking down recruitment rules or directing their reformulation, holding that the government has the authority to amend service structures and recruitment rules in accordance with administrative requirements.
The court restored the 2014 recruitment rules of the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) and set aside the Federal Service Tribunal’s judgment dated October 17, 2022.
In a written judgment authored by Justice Ayesha A. Malik, the Supreme Court held that under Article 212 of the Constitution, the jurisdiction of a Service Tribunal was confined to matters relating to the terms and conditions of service of civil servants. The tribunal must remain within the limits of its jurisdiction and refrain from interfering in administrative policy matters, the judgment stated.
According to the judgment, the Federal Service Tribunal had struck down the CGA recruitment rules framed on July 15, 2014, on the ground that they had not received prior approval from the Establishment Division.
The Supreme Court observed that the Establishment Division had subsequently approved amendments to the same rules in 2017, 2019 and 2021, while the rules had also remained in continuous operation. These subsequent approvals and the continuity of the rules supported their legal validity, it held.
The court noted that the employee concerned had been promoted from Junior Auditor to Senior Auditor on January 1, 2021, under the same rules, before challenging them.
The judgment clarified that promotion from Junior Auditor directly to Assistant Accounts Officer was neither a legal nor an acquired right. Promotion, by itself, did not constitute a fundamental right that an employee could claim as a matter of entitlement, it added.
The Supreme Court further noted that the promotion quota for Junior Auditors to the post of Senior Auditor (BS-16) had already been increased from 10 per cent to 50 per cent in May 2019.
The court held that a Service Tribunal should not interfere with a rule where it did not infringe an employee’s fundamental or legal rights. It could not substitute its own judgment for that of the executive or direct the administration to frame recruitment rules anew, the judgment concluded.
Source: APP (Associated Press of Pakistan)
