MUZAFFARABAD, Sep 3: The AJK Service Tribunal here on Monday suspended an allegedly controversial official notification whereby the charge of the post of director general (DG) Local Government and Rural Development (LG&RD) department was given to an officer from the engineering unit, triggering a strike by administration unit officials.
On August 10, the government transferred LG&RD department’s in-charge DG Ghulam Murtaza as an officer on special duty (OSD) and assigned the additional charge of the post to Kamran Hafeez, a superintending engineer (SE) of the department.
The order, which was said to be in violation of an earlier judgment of the Service Tribunal and the Supreme Court, created a state of chaos in the LG&RD department as officers of administration unit not only went on strike but also formed an ‘action committee’ to fight it tooth and nail.
Three of them, Mr Murtaza and divisional directors Sardar Nusrat Aziz and Gul Zaman Khan also filed an appeal against it in the Service Tribunal, relying on the tribunal’s earlier judgment and departmental rules as amended from time to time.
In his interim decision, Service Tribunal Chairman Syed Khalid Hussain Gillani held that an officer of the engineering unit was neither eligible to be promoted as DG nor was he eligible to be assigned the additional charge of the post and therefore the impugned notification appeared to have been issued in violation of the law and rules.
Suspending the notification till the next date of hearing, subject to objections from the other side, he also admitted the appeal for regular hearing to resolve the controversy once and for all.
Interestingly, when Mr Murtaza was appointed in-charge DG in February 2012, Mr Hafeez had challenged his appointment in the Service Tribunal which dismissed it on March 2, holding that under LG&RD rules engineering and administration were separate functional units and no official of engineering unit could claim seniority against the officer of administration unit. http://dawn.com/2012/09/04/appointment-of-dg-lgrd-ajk-service-tribunal-suspends-notification/
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