KP Assembly additional secretary’s promotion

PESHAWAR: The Service Tribunal on Monday once again declared the notification by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker to promote junior Additional Secretary KP Assembly Nasrullah to the post of Secretary Assembly as void.

A larger three-member bench of the tribunal comprising Hamid Mughal, Amin Kundi and Ahmad Hassan declared the appointment of junior additional secretary KP Assembly once again as secretary assembly illegal and void.

After the tribunal’s decision, Kifayatullah Afridi was again restored as acting Secretary KP Assembly.

Senior Additional Secretary KP Assembly Kifayatullah Afridi had challenged the promotion of junior secretary as a secretary in the KP Service Tribunal through his lawyer Ali Azeem Afridi.

The appeal was filed under section 4 of the KP Service Tribunal Act, 1974, seeking the decision of Departmental Promotion Committee and Speaker KP Assembly notification by promoting once again junior secretary as secretary assembly to be declared void.

During arguments, the lawyer submitted that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker has once again promoted junior Additional Secretary Nasrullah to the post of Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly (BPS-21) even though he had been demoted earlier by the Service Tribunal. “On the recommendations of Departmental Promotion/Recruitment Committee No 1 and in exercise of the powers conferred on him by Rule 10 read with Rule 6 of the KP Provincial Assembly Secretariat (Recruitment) Rules 1974, the Speaker is pleased to promote Nasrullah Khan, Additional Secretary BPS-20 (Personal) of the Provincial Assembly Secretariat of KP, against the vacant post of secretary (BPS-21) with immediate effect,” stated the notification issued by KP Assembly Speaker on September 25, 2018 .

It said that the notification was issued after the Supreme Court and Service Tribunal’s decisions in which Nasrullah Khan, whose original grade is BPS-19, was termed junior to Kifayatullah Afridi, senior additional secretary KP Assembly in BPS-20 since 2009. He was even declared junior to Ghulam Sarwar, another additional secretary.

Recently, the KP Assembly in a notification in compliance with the court orders demoted Nasrullah Khan from the post of secretary to additional secretary in the case of additional secretary KP Assembly Ghulam Sarwar. “The appellant is promoted as additional secretary (BPS-19) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly from the date his junior colleague (respondent No 3 Nasrullah) was promoted as additional secretary with back benefits and consequential benefits,” stated the notification issued by KP Assembly Speaker Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani and produced in the Service Tribunal as compliance report of the court decision.

The tribunal had declared the promotion of additional secretary Nasrullah Khan to the post of secretary in BPS-21 as void and directed the then respondent speaker Asad Qaiser to promote the petitioner along with all benefits.

The provincial government through the then speaker and Nasrullah Khan later challenged the decision in the Supreme Court.

On August 28, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals filed by the KP Assembly speaker and Nasrullah Khan.

Interestingly, even after the Supreme Court decision, Speaker Mushtaq Ghani again appointed Nasrullah as speaker KP Assembly after the Departmental Promotion Committee decision and again ignored the senior Additional Secretary Assembly Kifayatullah Afridi in promoting to the post of Speaker KP Assembly.