IN RE: PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL REPORTS OF THE OFFICERS OF THE INDIAN FOREST SERVICE versus (21/05/2025) — Supreme Court headnote

AI-generated headnote. Verify against the judgment before relying on it. Paragraph numbers refer to the judgment.

Summary

Applications in the T.N. Godavarman proceedings challenged a Madhya Pradesh Government Order on writing Performance Appraisal Reports of Indian Forest Service officers, which required departmental reporting authorities to obtain notes from the District Collector and Divisional Commissioner and placed IAS officers in the appraisal channel. The Court held the G.O. violated its binding orders in the Santosh Bharti case (22 September 2000) and the subsequent order accepting the Central Empowered Committee's report: up to the rank of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests the reporting and reviewing authorities must be the immediately superior officers within the Forest Department, and only for the PCCF may the reporting authority be an outsider to whom he reports. The G.O. was quashed and the State directed to reframe its rules within one month.

Issues

Whether officers of the Indian Administrative Service can be designated as reporting, reviewing or accepting authority for Performance Appraisal Reports of Indian Forest Service officers working within the Forest Department.
Whether the Madhya Pradesh G.O. requiring notes from the District Collector and Divisional Commissioner before appraisal of territorial forest officers was consistent with the Court's earlier orders in these proceedings.
What the definitions of 'reporting authority', 'reviewing authority' and 'accepting authority' in the All-India Services (Confidential Rolls) Rules, 1970 (as amended in 1987) and the All-India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007 require.

Provisions considered

Section 3(1), All-India Services Act, 1951Empowers the Central Government, after consulting the States, to make rules regulating recruitment and conditions of service of all-India services; the 1970 Confidential Rolls Rules, their 1987 amendment and the 2007 PAR Rules were all made under this power. (¶¶ 9, 10, 12, 13)
Rule 2(a), 2(e) and 2(f) (as amended by the Second Amendment Rules notified on 8 December 1987), All-India Services (Confidential Rolls) Rules, 1970Originally defined the reporting, reviewing and accepting authorities as the authority immediately superior to the officer, the reporting authority and the reviewing authority respectively, or such other authority as the Government empowered; after 1987 they refer to authorities 'supervising the performance' of the officer concerned as empowered by the Government. Following P.C. Wadhwa, Santosh Bharti and Binod Kumar, the Court read the rules as still requiring the reporting and reviewing authorities to be superior officers within the same service or department. (¶¶ 11, 12, 23, 24, 25, 32, 33, 37)
Rule 2(a), 2(j) and 2(k), All-India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007Define the accepting, reporting and reviewing authorities as the authorities supervising the performance of the reviewing authority, the officer reported upon and the reporting authority respectively; applied in the same way as the amended 1970 Rules, in line with Binod Kumar. (¶¶ 13, 32, 33)
Article 166(2) and (3), Constitution of IndiaRelied upon by the State to argue that under the Business (Allocation) Rules framed by the Governor the Additional Chief Secretary or Principal Secretary is the administrative head of the Forest Department and should be in the appraisal channel; the argument did not prevail against the Court's binding directions. (¶¶ 6, 7, 39)

Held

Apart from any legal provision, it is just and proper that a reporting authority be a person to whom the member of the service is answerable and who is higher in rank; the Government can empower as reporting authority only an authority superior in rank to the officer reported upon (P.C. Wadhwa reaffirmed). (¶¶ 23, 24)
Under the Santosh Bharti order of 22 September 2000 in these proceedings, up to the rank of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests the reporting authority must be the immediately superior officer within the Forest Department (DFO for ACF, Conservator for DFO, CCF for Conservator, APCCF for CCF, PCCF for APCCF), and the reviewing authority likewise must be within the department; only for the PCCF is the reporting authority a person outside the service, namely the one to whom he reports and who is superior in rank and hierarchy. (¶¶ 25, 26, 34, 37)
Madhya Pradesh's application to modify that order was examined by the Central Empowered Committee, which found the order consistent with the amended 1970 Rules and inappropriate the practice of District Collectors writing forest officers' reports; the Court accepted the CEC report, dismissed the application and directed all States to abide by the order of 22 September 2000, while the DoPT clarified that the order applies to forest officers working within the Forest Department and not to those posted in the Secretariat or other departments under a non-forest superior. (¶¶ 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 38)
Although the 1987 amendment and the 2007 Rules dropped the words 'immediately superior', the reporting authority must still be someone who supervises the officer's performance, ordinarily a higher-ranking officer of the same department, and because the reviewing authority is defined as the one supervising the reporting authority, both must belong to the same service or department (State of Assam v. Binod Kumar followed). (¶¶ 32, 33)
States may, if necessary, have Collectors and Commissioners record comments on a separate sheet about forest officers' performance in implementing development work funded by the district administration, but those comments must be considered by a superior departmental officer of the IFS when writing the report. (¶¶ 17, 19, 37)
The impugned G.O. was wholly in violation of the Court's specific directions, all other States being shown to adhere to them; issued without seeking clarification or modification from the Court, it was contemptuous in nature, though the Court refrained from initiating contempt proceedings against the officers responsible. (¶ 39)

Result

Applications allowed; the impugned Madhya Pradesh G.O. held to violate the order of 22 September 2000 (Santosh Bharti case), which is reiterated, and quashed and set aside; the State of Madhya Pradesh directed to reframe its rules within one month in strict adherence to that order as clarified by the MoEF letter of 8 November 2001 and the DoPT O.M. of 2 September 2004.