1994 PLP 238 (SCMR)

‑‑‑‑ Adverse remarks in Annual Confidential Report ‑‑‑Expunction‑‑‑Complete copies of Annual Confidential Reports need not be supplied to civil servant; nor delay in communicating such reports by itself would entitle civil servant to get it expunged, nor the fact that in earlier years his reports were good and he had been considered then fit for promotion‑‑‑Such grounds would be extraneous to expunction of adverse remarks. (d) Civil service‑‑‑ ‑‑‑‑ Annual Confidential Report containing adverse remarks against civil servant being incomplete for lack of .countersignatures of superior Officer, appeal to Service Tribunal was premature, therefore, expunction order of Service Tribunal was set aside; at the same time order of Departmental Authority treating such Annual Confidential Reports to be adverse without getting them countersigned or for utilizing them as such before getting those reports properly countersigned, was also set aside by Supreme Court. Ch. Ghulam Hassan Gulshan, Advocate instructed by Tanvir Ahmad, Advocate‑on‑Record for Appellants. Hassan Ahmed Kanwar, Advocate for Respondent. Date of hearing: 7th October, 1992. SHAFIUR RAHMAN, J.‑‑‑Leave to appeal was granted to examine whether the decision of the Service Tribunal expunging the adverse remarks in the Annual Confidential Reports of the respondent for the years 1980, 1983 and 1984 was based on any provision of law.

2. The respondent was an employee of the Federal Government. His services were transferred to the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) on 14‑10‑1959. While posted as Superintending Engineer his services were placed under the disposal of Mechanised Construction of Pakistan Limited (MCPL) in 1974 and he was repatriated therefrom in 1985. It was by a letter dated 14‑12‑1986 that adverse remarks recorded in his Annual Confidential Reports for the part of the year 1980, whole of the years 1983 and 1984 were communicated to him. He represented against it but was not successful. He, therefore, sought their expunction from the Service Tribunal. The Service Tribunal allowed the appeal on the grounds that the complete copies of .the Annual Confidential Reports and the reports recorded by the officers were not supplied to him, that the officer recording the reports was virtually of the rank of the respondent, that the reports were not countersigned by the superior authority and were communicated after inordinate delay and there was nothing against him during the previous years. On these grounds the remarks in the reports were expunged.

3. After hearing the learned counsel for the parties we find that the moment the Tribunal came to the conclusion that the reports required the countersignatures of the superior officer and the same were not there, it should have treated the reports as incomplete reports and appeal to the Tribunal to be premature, directing the Authority concerned to get the reports completed by the countersigning officer before communicating the adverse remarks. The other grounds that the complete copies of the Annual Confidential Reports were to be supplied to the respondent is not a requirement of the law, nor delay by itself entitles the Government servant to get it expunged, nor the fact that in the years earlier his reports were good and he had been considered then fit for promotion. These grounds are extraneous to the matter in issue.

4. The learned counsel for the appellants contended that while the officer/respondent was in the Mechanised Construction of Pakistan Limited, there was no countersigning officer. In that Organisation, apart from the Managing Director, there was the Chairman and if he was not competent then his report should have come to the parent department for necessary processing. Without the countersignatures of the superior officer, the Annual Confidential Report still remains incomplete and cannot be communicated as adverse report.

5. In the circumstances, we accept the appeal, set aside the expunction order and at the same time set aside the order of the departmental authority treating these Annual Confidential Reports to be adverse without getting them countersigned or for utilizing them as such before getting these reports properly countersigned. With this modification, the appeal is disposed of with no order as to costs. AA./W‑115/S Order accordingly.