The Supreme Court has said individual excellence may sometimes lead to superiority complex and hinder commitment to discipline, decorum and collegiality.
A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Joymalya Bagchi rejected a plea by Raju Narayana Swamy, a senior IAS officer of the 1991-batch against an order, finding him ineligible for the promotion to the post of Kerala's Chief Secretary in 2020.
The Kerala government opposed his plea, contending even if one ignored the noting in prior ACRs, service records for 2019-20 showed that the appellant had unauthorisedly absented himself for about a year i.e. from March 19, 2019 to March 16, 2020.
It submitted that promotion to the highest grade i.e. Chief Secretary grade is a sensitive matter and requires examination of the entire service record.
In its April 23, 2025 judgment, Justice Bagchi wrote on behalf of the bench, stating that keeping in mind the essential requisite of collective leadership in highest echelons of civil service, the committee was justified in giving due weightage to lack of adherence to discipline and collegiality.
The bench also held the failure to fix benchmark score as per Rule 2 of IAS (Pay) Rules, 2016 cannot be treated as a marker of arbitrariness or discrimination since the appellant was considered as a ‘special case' though 90 per cent of his ACRs were were not available.
“It cannot be said the decision of the committee is either mala fide or so unreasonable that a man of ordinary prudence would not have come to such a conclusion. It may also be relevant to bear in mind that the screening committee decision had not been assailed by appellant,” the bench said.
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