Court freezes police promotions

chandigarh:the punjab and haryana high court on tuesday ordered that promotions if any , from amongst the dsp to sp in punjab should not be effected till further orders , as the issue of pro-motions and the contentious mat-ter of seniority in punjab police , continued to figure in the punjab and haryana high court. this time three direct recruits to the posts of deputy superintendent of police (dsp) have sought the in-tervention of the court for first de-termining the seniority of directly recruited dsps vis-a-vis promotee dsps strictly in accordance with the service rules.the division bench comprising of justices amarbir singh gill and swatantar kumar have issued notice to the punjab home secre-tary, director general of police and 169 other respondents who all hap-pen to belong to the rank of pro-motee dsps. the petitioners harcharan singh dsp bhullar , dsp,dera bassi (pa-tiala), charanbjit kumar dsp, ja-landhar and rupinder singh dsp, kharar district ropar , have sought quashing of orders of october 10 and 16 , 2000 whereby the private respondents were given ante-dated seniority in the rank of dsp in clear and blatant disregard to statutory service rules and settled law. they have also sought summon-ing orders of relaxation passed in respect of porivate respondents (promotee dsps) and quashing the same besides directing the re-spondents to first determine the se-niority of the directly recruited dsps. they have also submitted that they were rtecruited dsps in 1993-94 and confirmed in 1995-96. the private respondents were inspec-tors and promoted as dsps on temporary basis between 1989 to 1994 though they were not fulfill-ing the conditions of six years ex-perience.. also, promotions were made without adjudging suitability ands fitness in consultation with the punjab public service commission vide impugned order and that the private respondents have been confirmed as dsp by treating their temporary promotion to be regular promotion and thereby the private respondents are placed senior to petitioners. the private respondents, it was further submitted, were being con-sidered for promotion to the post of superintendent of police (sp) by exclusion of petitioners , in other words the private respondents were being given seniority for the period of service which was not in line with the rules.