SC agrees to hear plea against Delhi HC verdict quashing cadre allocation of IAS, IPS officers

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on May 17 the Centre’s plea challenging the Delhi High Court’s verdict which quashed cadre allocation of IAS and IPS officers of the 2018 batch. The matter was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench comprising Justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that the high court had asked the government to redo the entire exercise. Mr. Mehta told the court that those selected under the cadre in 2018 batch have undergone training and were supposed to start joining their respective cadres from May 10. The Delhi High Court had recently quashed the Centre’s cadre allocations of IAS and IPS officers of 2018 batch under the new policy and ordered fresh cadre allocation. A Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli accepted the submission of the officers, who had approached the court challenging the process, that cadre allocation is a matter which would affect their careers for all times to come. It noted that re-allocation of cadres by the authorities should not take much time as it is done electronically, that is through computer programme or software, and the authorities already possess the requisite data in this regard. “For all the aforesaid reasons, we are inclined to allow these writ petitions and to quash the cadre allocations made by the respondents of the IAS officers vide communication dated December 3, 2018, and the IPS officers vide OM dated December 19, 2018. We, accordingly, direct so,” the Bench said. Source: The Hindu