L AHORE: The Lahore High Court has allowed a service appeal of a deputy registrar, setting aside a minor penalty of withholding of two annual increments and promotion.

The deputy registrar, Riaz Ahmad, and others were awarded the same penalties on account of not discharging their duties efficiently regarding a contract for hiring services of a private firm for preparation of photocopies of judicial documents in 2022.

Later in 2023, the promotion committee of the high court also deferred the promotion of the appellant on the basis of the penalty imposed on him.

The official challenged both the penalty andthe denialofthe promotion in his service appeal filed through Advocate Safdar Shaheen Pirzada.

A special bench comprising Justice Sajid Mehmood Sethi and Justice Muhammad Amjad Rafiq heard the appeal of the deputy registrar.

The bench found discrepancies in the impugned inquiry and the penalty imposed onthe appellant.

It noted that allegations against the appellant were no more severe than those leveled against his colleague additional registrar Mian Ashfaq for whom the inquiry officer recommended the same penalty.

However, while issuing the impugned guilty order, the name of the additional registrar was conspicuously omitted, the bench observed in its verdict.

The bench said, `No plausible explanation for this omission was offered either in the impugned order or during the proceedings before us.

Justice sethi, who authored the verdict, observed that when two individuals face departmental inquiries on the basis of the same set of allegations, disparate treatment becomes legally untenable.

`Therefore, if one person is acquitted following a thorough investigation of certain allegations, it creates a compelling precedent that logically extends to others facing the same charges,` the judge wrote in the decision, allowing the appeal of the deputy registrar.

The bench set aside the both impugned orders about the imposition of the penalty and the denial of the promotion to the appellant.