Supreme Court relief eludes policemen involved in Veerappan hunt

CHENNAI: In a setback to a section of Tamil Nadu police officers, the Supreme Court has refused to declare that the out-of-turn promotion given to police personnel involved in the hunt for erstwhile forest brigand Veerappan would be a one-step promotion and cannot be carried over by the beneficiaries for further promotions/seniority throughout their career.
“We are not inclined to interfere with the government orders granting the promotion but we need not say anything more for the reason it may cause some prejudice to the petitioners before us.The reason for the same is that while the challenge before us is predicated on the administrative orders, a statutory exercise has now been carried out where service rules have been amended. As to whether those rules are valid or not is not something for us to debate. If those rules are valid and are upheld, the members of the task force would be the beneficiary. If those rules are quashed, naturally, the effects, so far as the one stage accelerated promotion is concerned, would not be available to them in their promoted posts,” a division bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K M Joseph said.
The bench made the observation while disposing of pleas moved by P Jawahar and others.
“We are really concerned with the issue of the nature of the accelerated promotion granted to the police personnel as it is their say that once they are promoted through this process, it is the date of promotion which will count towards seniority while the other group of police officers contend that this was a one stage accelerated promotion only for that period of time and the seniority in the promoted post, once the others are promoted, would be as per the seniority rank in the post from which they were promoted, the bench added.