PESHAWAR: Rejecting a plea against his posting, the Peshawar High Court has upheld the appointment of a professor of the higher education department as the director general (law and human rights).
A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Inamullah Khandeclared that amendments were made to the relevant rules in 2024 but they couldn’t be applied with retrospective effect to the 2023 posting of the present DG.
The petitioners, including Aya Khan and five other former employees of the directorate of law, had requested the court to declare illegal the appointment of Ghulam Ali as DG (law and human rights) on Dec 13, 2023.
They said that being a teaching cadre employee, the respondent should be asked under what authority he was holding the post of DG (law and human rights), whereas the post belonged to Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), Provincial Civil Service (PCS) or Provincial Management Service (PMS).
The counsel for petitioners said thatthe office of the DG was established through a notification on Jan 30, 2019, while the recruitment rules were later notified prescribing the method of recruitment for various posts ranging from BPS-1 to BPS-20 in the directorate general of law.
He added that the said rules were amended on Dec 5, 2024, whereby the DG’s post was prescribed to be filled by transfer from amongst officers belonging to the PAS, PCS or PMS.
‘The post of DG (BPS-20) is a scheduled post and can only be filled by an officer belonging to one of the said services,’ he insisted.
The lawyer added that the government, in violation of those rules, issued the impugned notification on Dec 13, 2023, whereby Ghulam Ali was posted as the DG.Advocate Ali Gohar Durrani appeared for Ghulam Ali, whereas additional advocate general Mohsin Kamran represented the provincial government.
They said that the respondent was appointed in 2023, whereas the amendment upon which the petitioners principally relied was notified on Dec 5, 2024, nearly one year after the impugned posting.
According to them, the date when Ghulam Ali was posted, the subsequent restriction prescribing that the post of DG be filled by transfer from among officers of PAS, PCS or PMS had not yet been introduced throughthe said amendment.
It is a settled principle of interpretation that an amend-ment to statutory rules was ordinarily prospective in operation, unless retrospective effect is expressly provided or necessarily follows from the language and scheme of the instrument.
‘No material has been brought to our notice to demonstrate that the amendment dated 05.12.2024 was intended to operate retrospectively or to invalidate postings made before its promulgation. Consequently, the legality of the posting of respondent Ghulam Ali must be examined with reference to the legal framework applicable on 13.12.2023, and not by applying to it a restriction introduced subsequently,’ the bench declared in its 16-page detailed judgement.