Now if you have been denied with a chance to get empanelled for central deputation, you can claim to see the processes and logic behind the decision making. The DoPt will have to furnish the record and reason behind non empanelment.
A High Court division bench of Uttrakhand headed by Chief Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Alok Kumar Verma, in case filed by a 2002 batch Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Sanjeev Chaturvedi, who was denied empanelment as joint secretary in the centre.The court ordered Central Government to provide the IFS officer with documents related to his empanelment.
Specifically, the court has directed the respondents to disclose records concerning the process and decision-making of his empanelment at the level of the Joint Secretary, who made the decision on November 15, 2022.
The disclosure is to be limited to documents pertaining only to Chaturvedi's empanelment.
The order says, “Keeping in view that the petitioner has sought his own record, a direction is being given to the respondents to give the record relating to the process and decision making of the empanelment of the petitioner at the level of the Joint Secretary, who took the decision on November 15, 2022.”
The order clarified that “only the records relating to the petitioner's empanelment shall be supplied to the petitioner.”
A section of bureaucrats considers this as a landmark decision like the 2007 Supreme Court judgement in Dev Dutt vs. UOI. It may be underlined that the decision would work for others as a precedence and can be utilised by all those who want to access their empanelment records.
What is the case?
Central Government had passed an order on November 15, in 2022, which had said that ‘Appointment Committee of Cabinet (ACC) has not approved', empanelment of Sanjiv Chaturvedi for ‘holding the post of JS/equivalent at the Centre'.
In his petition, Chaturvedi cited his ‘consistent outstanding grading', four presidential orders passed in his favour during his Haryana tenure, appreciation of his performance as Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) in AIIMS by the Union Health Ministry as ‘exemplary' and various orders of the Uttarakhand High Court, Delhi High Court, as well as the Supreme Court, making favourable observations about his credentials.
He also claimed of being ‘relentlessly persecuted by powers that be, for years and years, for discharging his official duties honestly and fearlessly, in accordance with the law of land and the present petition is the result of a never-ending series of such events.'
Initially, he had filed a petition in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in December, 2022. However, the Petition was dismissed in May this year on the ground that, ‘disclosure of the records pertaining to ACC and CSB being confidential documents is prohibited as per Section 8(1)(i) of RTI Act.'
Chaturvedi challenged this order before Uttarakhand High Court in June, claiming that orders of Tribunal ‘has been passed on the basis of prima facie baseless, fictitious, factually incorrect and unsubstantiated submissions made' by Central Government.
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