Equality Rules Supreme

Retired Haryana-cadre IAS officer Ashok Khemka has secured a significant legal victory, with the Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling that the Centre subjected him to discriminatory treatment by denying him empanelment at the level of Additional Secretary/Secretary while extending the same benefit to other similarly placed officers.

- Dilip Cherian

In a sharp rebuke to the Union government, a Division Bench comprising Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi and Justice Deepak Manchanda questioned why Khemka was denied relaxation of eligibility norms when such relaxations had routinely been granted to others. The problem, the court noted, was not merely the decision itself but the absence of any explanation for treating Khemka differently.

The verdict offers a measure of vindication to one of India’s most well-known whistleblower-babus, whose career became almost as famous for its frequent transfers as for its controversies. Khemka had challenged three orders of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which had rejected his claim that he ought to have been considered empanelled before retirement.

At the heart of the dispute was the requirement of three years of central deputation for empanelment. The court pointed out that while the rule exists, the government also has the authority to relax it. More importantly, it has done so in the past. The Bench cited the case of a 1992-batch Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer who received empanelment in 2022 after the eligibility condition was relaxed. Khemka’s request, however, had been turned down a year earlier.

The court unequivocally stated that once the government chooses to relax a rule for one set of officers, denying the same consideration to another similarly placed officer without justification amounts to discrimination.