ISLAMABAD: The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), the country`s newly-established apex forum for constitutional interpretation, apparently acting under the proviso of Article 208 of the Constitution made certain appointments in which some employees have been placed in the federal government`s Special Professional Pay Scale (SPPS) policy.

A notification issued by FCC earlier this week, and approved by Chief Justice Aminuddin Khan, created eight senior posts including one in BS-22 and seven in BS-21 all placed in SPPS. Under SPPS-I, the pay package ranges from Rs1.5 million to Rs2m, almost equivalent to the salary of a high court judge.However, senior federal officials familiar with service laws say the FCC administration has thus far not framed any rules under Article 208 and therefore, under the proviso to the said article, can only follow the Supreme Court Rules relating to the appointment of officers and servants of the SC.

Assigning the pay scales of SPPS to certain officers, without there being a similar provision in the related Supreme Court Rules, may raise issues as to the legality of the settled terms and conditions of officers and servants of FCC.

At present there are four types of pay packages for those being paid from the exchequer.

It includes the Basic Pay Scale, which applies to all the government sector; the Project Pay Scale, whichcovers the salaries of those working on specific projects of the government; the Management Pay Scale, also called the MP Scale for highly trained professionals; and SPPS, which was introduced to attract the highly paid experts of the private sector.

According to the FCC notification issued under Article 208 of the Constitution the court has created administrative posts, including: registrar (SPPS-I/BS-22) one post, secretary to the chief justice (SPPS/BS-21) one post, additional registrar (SPPS/BS-21)six posts, deputy registrars (BS-20) six posts, assistant registrars (BS-19) 10 posts, senior private secretaries (BS-20) five posts , research and reference officers (BS-19-20) six posts, and a range of other positions from BS-16 to BS-2, including senior assistants, clerks, dri-vers, daftaris, gasids and sweepers.

The notification states that the expenditure will be met from FCC`s allocated budget for FY 2025-26.

`Not permitted under SC Rules` A senior court official told Dawn that the SPPS pay scales were incorporated into the notification without fully understanding the legal prerequisites, adding that a review was now under consideration.

The 27th Constitutional Amendment, which created FCC, amended Article 208 to clarify that till the court frames its own rules, the rules governing officers and servants of the Supreme Court shall apply mutatis mutandis.

The proviso read: `...till such time rules are made in this regard, the rules providing for the appointmentof officers and servants of the Supreme Court and for their terms and conditions of employment shall mutatis mutandis apply to the officers and servants of the Federal Constitutional Court.

A senior SC official confirmed that the court`s rules contained no provision for SPPS appointments and did not permit high-salary contractual expert hiring structures of this nature.

The SPPS framework detailed in the Establishment Division`s office memorandum of April 9, 2024 lays out strict conditions for creating and filling the SPPS positions.

They include that the SPPS posts are for technical specialists, not regular bureaucracy. This means they require `highly skilled and specialised professional experts` in specific technical fields.

`It cannot be used to appoint registrars, secretaries, additional registrars or routine judicial administrators, who fall under regular service rules,` a senior official of the Establishment Division told Dawn.

Mandatory steps As per the SPPS policy, before creating any posts, the sponsoring division must: establish that no equivalent expertise exists within sanctioned strength; prepare detailed terms of reference, job descriptions, job specifications, deliverables and timelines; and provide justification for hiring technical specialists under SPPS instead of management orregular service scales.

There is no indication that FCC conducted such a need assessment as it was not mentioned in the notification.

The SPPS recruitment must be competitive and widely advertised. The policy requires: national advertisement of vacancies; scrutiny by an internal committee; selection by a special selection board, which includes ministry officials and outside experts; and approval from the relevant minister or secretary depending on scale.

These steps are mandatory, but the FCC notification simply created the SPPS posts without initiating any recruitment process.

The SPPS appointments are contractual, not permanent, the policy read. It added that SPPS was strictly for two-year contracts, extendable only after performance evaluation. The FCC notification creates the posts as regular establishment positions, contradicting the SPPS structure.

FCC Registrar Mohammad Hafeezullah Khan told Dawn that the SPPS packages were `in accordance with the law.

He argued that Article 208 empowered FCC to determine its own staffing structure.