In a setback of sorts to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi government headed by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, the Telangana high court on Tuesday struck down an order of the Central Administrative Tribunal continuing chief secretary Somesh Kumar in the Telangana cadre.
After prolonged hearings, high court Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan allowed a writ petition filed by the Centre’s Department of Personnel and Training challenging the Central Administrative Tribunal-Hyderabad order allocating senior IAS officer Somesh Kumar to Telangana in 2016.
The CAT order dated March 29, 2016 allocating Somesh Kumar, currently the Telangana Chief Secretary was quashed on Monday by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Bhuyan and Justice S Nanda.
The counsel for Somesh Kumar has made a request to keep the order in abeyance for three weeks so that an appeal can be preferred, but the high court rejected the plea and ordered that Somesh be transferred to Andhra immediately.
“Having considered the matter in detail and pronounced the judgment, we are not inclined to stay the same,” the judge said.
He, however, said as per Rule 6(1) of the Indian Administrative Service (Regulations of Seniority) Rules, 1987 read with Rule 10 of the Indian Administrative Service (Probation) Rules, 1954, seniority of Somesh Kumar will not be disturbed and will remain the same.
The judge said allocation to a cadre is an incidence of service and no officer has a vested right to claim allotment to a particular cadre.
“The CAT had grossly erred in interfering with the allocation of the first respondent to the State of Andhra Pradesh. Consequently, judgment and order dated 29.03.2016 passed by CAT, being clearly unsustainable in law and on facts, is hereby set aside and quashed,” the order said,