LAHORE: In yet another step to do away with illegal promotion culture, the Punjab police department has `re-fixed` seniority of 20 superintendents of police (SPs) and 143 DSPs reverting them to the rank of inspectors.

A notification to the effect hasbeen issued. Four lady police officers -Shahida Nasreen, Fehmida Yasmin, Rehana Kuasar and Sadaf Fatima -are also among the 20 SPs.

The male police officers include Ghulam Jillani, Mohammad Iqbal, Haseeb Hussain Shah, Tariq Mahmood, Yasin Bashir etc.

This time action was taken against a total of 163 senior police of ficers who had got antedated promotions all over the province.

Earlier, seniority of those police officers was `re-fixed` who had been granted `out-of-turn promotions` as reward for showing `gallantry.

Former Lahore CIA chief UmarVirk and some district police officers (DPOs) were also among them besides many SPs.

An interesting aspect of the fresh development is that the cases of these 163 senior police ofhcers (antedated) `suddenly` came to the fore when the department was scrutinising record of out-of-turn promotions.

The department immediately referred the issue to the high-level committee which finally gave the go-ahead to re-fix their seniority in accordance with their batchmates`.

Many of the police officers reverted to the rank of inspector had either died or retired fromservice.

The action was taken after the Supreme Court passed a judgment in January 2016, directing the Punjab chief secretary and Inspector General of Police to refix their seniority in accordance with their batchmates`.

The SC in its judgment had declared that no police personnel or civil servant was entitled to out-of-turn promotion on account of gallantry award or otherwise. It had also declared that antedated seniority to a civil servant was also a violation of the law.

The apex court had expressed its displeasure at the Punjab gov-ernment for not implementing the earlier decisions about re-fixing the seniority in the same case.

`In pursuance of the Supreme Court judgment on Jan 1, 2016, the office scrutinised its record whereby it was revealed that various antedated promotions granted to on-roll DSP and SP existed which created discrimination against batchmates,` an official letter states.

To ensure the conformity between the inter-se-seniority of batchmates their dates of promotion as inspector are hereby fixed as per principles of notified seniority lists 2014, it further said.