NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday asked the top court to clear the confusion caused by its conflicting interim orders, two of which allowed the government to continue with quotas in promotions while one stalled it, leading to logjam in promotions to 1.3 lakh posts.

Appearing for the Centre, attorney general K K Venugopal told a bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant that the problem arose from orders of the HCs of Punjab & Haryana and Delhi quashing the office memorandum of 1997 permitting quota in promotion.

H e said in two interim orders of 2018, the SC had allowed the government to continue providing reservation in promotion subject to final outcome of the pending petitions. However, in another interim order on April 15, 2019, it directed the Centre to maintain status quo with regard to promotions. The SC said it would hear the plea after four weeks.

In its application, the Centre said: "If the interim order of April 15, 2019, connotes that no further promotions are to be effected, promotions in almost all grades will get affected not only in government of India but may also in state governments. In the central secretariat alone, about 9,000 officers/employees have got affected so far and the figure is bound to increase with passage of time. It will tell upon morale and, as a result, on efficiency of government employees.

"This apart, a significant number of government servants are retiring every month without getting promotions due to them. This is causing resentment, demoralisation and confusion among a large section of government servants. If it continues, a flood of cases is likely to come up. In fact, the huge logjam, which existed earlier, is likely to be repeated in the near future."

It said quashing of an over 20-year-old office memorandum could lead to mass reversion in promotions leading to multiple litigations. "The Delhi HC judgment has also affected morale of employees due to uncertainty about their future prospects, fear of reversion etc. As a consequence of this judgment, the pension of several lakhs of former employees would get affected and the judgment would have overall adverse impact on smooth functioning of the administrative machinery across all the organisations of Union of India," it added.

