Bilaspur, Sep 28 (PTI) The Chhattisgarh High Court on Wednesday set aside the Central Administrative Tribunal's (CAT) order of granting conditional relief to IPS officer Mukesh Gupta and quashing the state government's order to cancel his promotion.

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The division bench of Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice Deepak Kumar Tiwari quashed the CAT's order and allowed the state government's writ petition against it citing the promotion of the officer was against the norms, said Deputy Advocate General Jitendra Pali, who appeared for the state.

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In 2017, the Chhattisgarh government (then headed by the BJP) had decided to create three posts of the rank of Special Director General/Director General (ex-cadre) and accordingly sent a letter on December 4 that year to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) seeking concurrence, which is mandatory, for filling up the posts, he said.

Though the government of India refused to grant concurrence, three posts of DGP were created for a temporary period of two years starting January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019 and at the same time, a fresh proposal was sent by the state to the MHA seeking its concurrence, he said.

Meanwhile Gupta, a 1988-batch IPS officer, and two others were on October 6, 2018 to DGP rank from Additional DGP on temporary basis awaiting concurrence from the Centre, he said.

Again, the Centre denied concurrence, and after the change of guard in Chhattisgarh, the state government cancelled the order of creation of three ex-cadre posts and promotion in September 2019.

Challenging the state government's order, Gupta filed an application in the CAT.

The CAT quashed the state government's cancellation order holding the promotion granted to Gupta as valid and directed the state to grant consequential benefits as are permissible under the rules and laws.

Subsequently, the state government filed a writ petition challenging the CAT's order before the division bench of the HC, Pali said.

The hearing on the petition concluded on September 6, while the judgment was delivered on Wednesday.

The HC in its order said, "...In any case, the period of the ex-cadre posts created, even otherwise, would have expired on December 31, 2019 and therefore, the promotion could not have been continued on such ex-cadre posts, at any rate, beyond the date."

"It is not a case where an officer having been promoted in a cadre post had been demoted to a lower post. There is no inherent right to continue in an ex-cadre post, creation of which itself was not in tune with the process initiated by the state government and therefore, if the state later on rectifies the same, no fault can be attributed to the state for taking such a step," it said.

The order of the CAT is set aside. Resultantly, the writ petition is allowed, it said.

Gupta is under suspension since February 2019 after a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against him for allegedly intercepting telephone calls during the Nagrik Apurti Nigam scam investigation, officials said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)