New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a big blow to the Madhya Pradesh government by cancelling one of its government orders. This order gave the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers the right to review the confidential reports of Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers. The court called it a blatant violation of the rules and said that this order is a contempt of the Supreme Court’s instructions already given. In fact, the Madhya Pradesh government had issued an order in June 2024, stating that IAS officers like District Collector would review the Annual Confidential Report (APAR) of forest officers.
A bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih heard the petition on Wednesday. The court clearly said that the order of the state government is completely against the decision given by the Supreme Court on 22 September 2000. In that decision, the court had directed that the report of IFS officers should be written only by a senior officer of the Forest Service.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said, “A practice is followed in Madhya Pradesh in which IAS officers working as district collectors or senior officers are involved in filing the annual confidential reports of IFS officers. While almost all the states of the country are following the order of the Supreme Court of 2000, Madhya Pradesh is the only state which is ignoring this order and running its own separate system.”
The court also admitted that the state government’s order falls under the purview of contempt of court, but at present no contempt action will be taken against the officers. The court said that it could have done so, but is giving the government a chance to improve. The Supreme Court has clearly instructed that the Madhya Pradesh government will have to prepare new rules according to the old orders of the Supreme Court within a month. Also, it will have to be ensured that from now on, the confidential reports of IFS officers are written only by those officers who are from their service cadre and are senior to them.
The performance of officers in government services is evaluated annually through a confidential report called APAR (Annual Performance Appraisal Report). This report decides whether the officer will get promotion or not and plays an important role in his service record. During the hearing on Wednesday, the court remarked, “It seems that other states were following this practice. In which the ‘reporting authority’ and the ‘review authority’ were from the same background.
In which the ‘Reporting Authority’ was the senior officer to the person about whom the report was being made and the ‘Review Authority’ was the authority to monitor the performance of the ‘Reporting Authority’, whereas the State of Madhya Pradesh was not following this established practice. The Supreme Court further said in the judgment that the Department of Personnel and Training had clarified in September 2004 that the September 2000 order of the apex court was applicable to forest officers working within the Forest Department and was not applicable to forest officers working outside the department.
