New Delhi: The Centre, in its appeal against the Delhi High Court order quashing the Air Force's promotion policy of 2002, has said that Air Vice-Marshal Harish Masand was not promoted to Air Marshal post because of "serious censures" against him.

The appeal, which would come up for hearing before the Supreme Court on Monday (Dec 13, 2004), said the reason for the low assessment by the Special Promotion Board was that Masand had been the recipient of not one but three censures.

"The High Court has not considered the effect of these serious censures especially the latest censure of June 1, 2001 which relates to gross financial impropriety," it said.

The High Court had held that censures in question could not adversely affect the case of Masand as he was promoted to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal on December 26, 2001.

The Centre said that the High Court failed to consider or to notice that the promotion of Masand as Air Vice-Marshal on December 26, 2001, was pursuant to a consideration of his case by the Selection Board No.1 much prior to the censure with regard to gross financial irregularity awarded to him on May 27, 2001 and communicated to him on June 1, 2001.

"This was after the meeting of the Selection Board which promoted him to Air Vice-Marshal and the censures were not before the Board at the time of his promotion to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal," the Centre said.

The High Court had given the verdict on November 8 while deciding two petitions filed by AVMs T S Chhatwal and Harish Masand, who had alleged that they were denied promotions to the rank of Air Marshal by the February 2003 Special Promotion Board (SPB) which had promoted A D Joshi, J S Gujral, F H Major and A K Singh to the rank.

The High Court had directed that the fresh SPB would re-assess the comparative merit of Masand, Chhatwal and other candidates as per the 2004 promotion policy which gave only five per cent weightage to Board marks.

The Centre in its appeal said as per the 2002 Promotion Policy, the Selection Board consisted of 14 Members including the Chief of Army Staff, all the Vice-Chiefs of Army Staff and four senior-most Air Officers Commanding in Chief of the Air Forces Command.

"The High Court failed to consider that such a plurality in the composition of the Selection Board by itself negates the possibility of any 'influence' or 'arbitrariness'," it said.

Casting a shadow of doubt over the promotion process in the Air Force, the High Court on November 8 had quashed the promotions of four Air Marshals and ordered setting up of a fresh Promotion Board within four weeks to reconsider their cases along with two AVMs who were wrongly denied promotions.