Chandigarh, April 30
Granting relief to a section of Army officers who were placed at a disadvantage on being deputed to the Directorate General Quality Assurance (DGQA), the Chandigarh Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has held that conditions of service cannot be altered retrospectively to the detriment of officers.

Allowing a petition filed by a Colonel, the tribunal has held that the new policy for permanent secondment to DGQA promulgated in April 2010 would not apply to officers permanently seconded prior to that date. Such officers would remain entitled to higher promotions as they were promised at the time of their secondment earlier.

The new policy provided that superseded and non-empanelled lieutenant colonels would now not be considered for permanent secondment and that the Special Merit Board (SMB) had been discontinued. The fresh policy stated that non-empanelled and superseded officers who had been granted permanent secondment in the DGQA in the past would only be granted one promotion to the rank of time-scale colonel and this clause would be applicable to those non-empanelled officers also who had already been promoted to colonel in DGQA.

The petitioner had contended that clauses of the policy were conceptually flawed because he was not a non-empanelled or superseded officer since he was a lieutenant colonel when he had been permanently seconded to DGQA and had not faced his fresh promotion board at all. Even the MS branch at the Army Headquarters had not declared any affected officer as finally non-empanelled or superseded. Further, he was seconded in April 2008 and was promoted to Colonel in DGQA in October 2008 as per the then existing policy and hence, the fresh guidelines which were for consideration of service officers for permanent secondment with effect from April 2010 could not be therefore retrospectively applied to him.

The new policy implied that officers already promoted to the rank of colonel (selection grade) much before issuance of the policy, who because of incorrect interpretation of the policy by the department, were looked at as superseded or non-empanelled, would be demoted to the status of colonel (time-scale) and their future promotions shall be barred. Time-scale colonels are lower in stature than selection grade colonels and they can be employed only against vacancies tenable by lieutenant colonels.