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The government’s lateral entry scheme to invite talent into the bureaucracy from outside the system — by contractual hiring of joint secretaries — was put on hold last year after the Opposition and allies objected to the absence of quotas.
While that put a question mark on the future of the scheme — 63 appointments have been made under it since 2019 — a court case that could have a bearing on it is also waiting for almost five years for hearings to begin.
The legal standoff began back in February 2020 when Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi challenged the Lateral Entry scheme before the Nainital Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal on the ground that it lacked legal sanctity and procedural rigour.
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When CAT resumed its regular functioning after the Covid pandemic, the Centre cited the matter’s “importance and nationwide repercussions” to ask for transferring the case to Delhi. In December 2020, the tribunal allowed the transfer and Chaturvedi moved Uttarakhand HC.
In February 2021, CAT Chairman Justice L Narasimha Reddy, followed by a judicial member, recused from hearing the case. Soon after, the CAT Delhi Bench put the case on hold pending the HC’s decision.
In October 2021, the Uttarakhand HC ruled against transferring the case to Delhi. The Centre then approached the Supreme Court, where a two-judge bench, in February 2022, put a stay on the HC order. Subsequently, it reserved judgment in April 2022, and eventually referred the case in March 2023 to a larger Bench as “the issue involved affects a large number of employees and is of public importance.”
It took another year and a half for the SC to constitute that larger three-judge Bench and list the matter last July.
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Six months on, the case is yet to come up for a hearing.
The Indian Express reviewed the various submissions made before the CAT by applicant Chaturvedi, and the replies filed by the government. These are the key contentions:
Constitutional questions: Multiple SC judgments have held that contractual appointments to permanent posts disregard the constitutional scheme of permanent civil services, argued the applicant.
Also, Article 309 of the Constitution says that recruitment to Central government jobs can only be through an Act of Parliament or a statutory Rule framed under the authority of the President. None of these, the applicant submitted, was done for the “Lateral Entry” scheme.
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In its reply, the DoPT said the “doctrine of pleasure” could be invoked under Article 310 where it is up to the President to appoint any person having special qualifications to any post.
In a counter, the applicant argued that the powers to appoint under Article 310 were not for bulk recruitment.
Conflict of interest: The applicant submitted that candidates from the private sector would join the ministry dealing with subjects in their domain of interest before going back to their previous roles, which would expose the government to risks of confidentiality and other conflicts of interest.
The applicant alleged the absence of rigorous verification methods to ascertain the duration and credentials of a candidate’s “service records, including vigilance issues, integrity certificate, expertise claims, and performance appraisal,” as done in the case of government officers.
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The applicant also questioned the justification of lateral entry as there was no shortage of empanelled officers who had applied for posting at the JS level. As reported by The Indian Express last August, the DoPT countered the rationale of the scheme in 2017 by flagging that for every vacancy at the JS level, there were, on average, 18 applications from empanelled officers.