The Madras High Court has upheld the validity of a 360 degree appraisal/multi source feedback system introduced by the Centre in 2016 for appraising the performance of the all India service officers, in State government service, for empanelment so that they could apply for vacancies that arise under the Government of India (GoI).
Justices V.M. Velumani and V. Lakshminarayanan dismissed a writ petition filed by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Dayanand Kataria challenging the 360 degree appraisal system. The judges, however, refrained from imposing costs on the petitioner “since an interesting question of law had been framed and argued.”
According to Mr. Kataria, he belonged to the 1989 batch of Tamil Nadu cadre and was empaneled to serve as Joint Secretary level officer under the GoI in 2012. Such empanelment took place by assessing his performance in terms of the 1996 office memorandum issued by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
He was due for empanelment as an Additional Secretary and then Secretary in the subsequent years. However, it did not happen due to the introduction of the multi source feedback system under which the government had decided to elicit opinions about individual officers from seniors, peers, juniors, external stakeholders and serving secretaries.
Hence, he had approached the court to declare the 360 degree appraisal system as illegal, void and to be in violation of the principles of natural justice. Not finding any merit in his plea, the Division Bench said, it did not find any illegality in the Centre deciding to assess an officer’s performance by looking beyond his/her Annual Confidential Report (ACR).
An expert committee had been constituted to receive inputs about an officer from his seniors, peers and juniors on well defined attributes such as decisiveness and quality of work; willingness to take responsibility and moral courage; innovativeness, initiation and risk taking abilities; patience and problem solving skills; being a team player and so on.
“If an employer wants certain qualities in its employees, especially at the senior level, it cannot be said to be arbitrary. By no stretch of imagination can it be said that these are vague. Further more, as submitted by the learned Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan, the report of the expert committee is not final,” the Bench wrote.
Authoring the verdict, Justice Lakshminarayanan pointed out that the expert committee’s report was only an additional input and not the be all and end all with respect to empanelment. There was also a separate review panel which would conduct an independent assessment and file a report to the Special Committee of Secretaries (SCOS).
The SCOS, in turn, assists the Cabinet Secretary in reviewing the matter and placing it before the Cabinet Committee on Appointments which was the final authority on preparing the list of empanelment. “Therefore, the fear of the writ petitioner that the expert panel could act in an arbitrary manner has also been resolved,” the Bench added.
Pointing out that the ACR was also being taken into consideration, the judges concluded saying: “While eligibility may be matter of judicial review, suitability certainly is not. In which manner and how the government identifies those suitable for its needs is not judicially reviewable unless it is arbitrary and violative of the Constitution or the statutory rules.”
Published - April 08, 2023 03:20 pm IST
