High court issues notice to Centre on Khemka’s fresh plea

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday put the Centre on notice on a fresh plea of senior Haryana cadre IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who has demanded records pertaining to empanelment or exclusion of officers at the Centre be summoned.

The fresh plea has been filed days after the HC had put the Centre on notice for August 24, in a plea wherein Khemka had challenged the CAT order dismissing his petition seeking direction to the Centre to consider his empanelment. As per Khemka, he was empanelled as joint secretary in December 2010 and applied for central deputation in 2011, 2012 and 2014, but was not appointed.

Non-empanelment at this stage would lead to a cascading effect and he will not be able to serve at the Centre permanently, he had argued.

In the fresh plea, the Haryana IAS officer says that on June 8, he had sought information under RTI to give names of all IAS officers who had been given relaxation against empanelment guidelines for evaluating their suitability for inclusion in the panel of secretary/additional secretary, but the information was denied.

Then again on July 9, the information was sought to give names of all IAS officers who after April 2016 were excluded from consideration for evaluating their suitability for inclusion in the panel of secretary/additional secretary because of non-fulfilment of guidelines, but it too was refused.

Hence, no information was produced to substantiate that despite him being empanelled at the post of joint secretary in 2010 and being placed in the offer list in 2011 and 2012, why his appointment never fructified.