Nagaland Police UB-AB promotion row: HC upholds govt rules, rejects petitions

DIMAPUR — The Kohima Bench of Gauhati High Court has dismissed three writ petitions filed by a group of Unarmed Branch (UB) Inspectors of Nagaland Police challenging disparities in promotional avenues between the Armed Branch (AB) and Unarmed Branch (UB) cadres.

The petitioners argued that while AB officers recruited alongside them had risen through multiple promotions to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP), most UB personnel had received only one promotion in their careers.

The petitioners sought the quashing of Rule 33(b) of Part III of the Nagaland Police Manual, which governs promotions of non-gazetted officers, and demanded a combined seniority list for both UB and AB cadres. They also questioned the legality of the 28:22 promotion ratio between AB and UB Inspectors to DySP rank, introduced by a 2020 government notification.

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They also argued that the Police Manual had no legal validity, as it was not widely publicised and was only published in the Nagaland Gazette in 2018, eight years after its notification in 2010.

The state government countered that the manual was validly notified under Article 309 of the Constitution and had been in effect since March 8, 2010, even before its later gazette publication. They submitted that the AB and UB cadres carry different duties, making a combined seniority list untenable.

In its judgement delivered on Friday, a Division Bench comprising Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Yarenjungla Longkumer observed that the duties assigned to the two branches were distinct, with the AB tasked with quasi-military duties, armed escorts and guards, while the UB covered investigation, traffic regulation, CID and court duties.

“From a conjoint reading of Rule 1(ii) and Rule 1(iii) of Part III of the Nagaland Police Manual, the duties entrusted to the personnel of the Unarmed Branch Police are not similar to the duties entrusted to the police personnel in the Armed Branch. Hence, in these writ petitions, the petitioners have not been able to successfully show and/or demonstrate that the nature of the jobs that are performed by the Armed Branch and the Unarmed Branch are similar, and therefore, the court is constrained to hold that no case of discrimination by the State has been made out by the petitioners,” the order stated.

The bench also rejected the claim that the petitioners were arbitrarily placed in UB. Referring to the recruitment advertisement of March 23, 1999, the court noted that vacancies were advertised both for the India Reserve Battalion and for posts under Nagaland Police, without specifying branch allocations.

It stated that the petitioners had joined service “with full knowledge that they could be employed in any of the vacancies that then existed in the Nagaland Police” and, by serving for years without objection, had waived the right to later challenge their postings.

On the challenge to the validity of the Police Manual, the court pointed out that it had been notified in March 2010 under Article 309 of the Constitution and was being acted upon by 2017, even before its publication in the Gazette in August 2018. The bench held that the petitioners had not shown any prejudice from this and dismissed their reliance on Supreme Court rulings concerning excise notifications as inapplicable.

The court further noted that the 28:22 promotion ratio between Armed and Unarmed Branch Inspectors to the post of DySP was backed by a Cabinet decision and was a matter of executive policy.

“This court, in exercise of writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, would not undertake the task of examining as to whether the ratio of promotion in two branches of Nagaland Police, being 28:22, was right or wrong…That exercise is one of the essential functions of the state administration,” the bench held.