Judiciary Must Avoid Unnecessary Interference With Administrative Decisions Involving Specialized Expertise: Supreme Court

While allowing the appeal against a Punjab and Haryana High Court order, which set aside Chief Minister ML Khattar's (Accepting Authority's) remarks and overall grade regarding senior IAS Officer Ashok Khemka's Performance Appraisal Report (PAR), the Supreme Court yesterday reiterated the principle of judicial restraint in administrative decisions.

Calling it a foundational principle of the Constitution, the Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Satish Chandra Sharma said, "the judiciary must exercise restraint and avoid unnecessary intervention qua administrative decision(s) of the executive involving specialised expertise in the absence of any mala-fide and / or prejudice."

For an understanding of the factual background and other issues, click here.

While analyzing the issue as to whether the High Court could have interfered with the Tribunal's order, the Bench underlined the importance of judicial restraint by firstly referring to Caretel Infotech Ltd. v. Hindustan Petroleum Corpn. Ltd, a decision where the top Court cautioned that constitutional courts ought not to substitute their view for that of the administrative authority. In the said case, it was also categorically said that mere disagreement with the decision-making process does not suffice.

Moving on, the Bench made reference to the decision in State of Jharkhand v. Linde India Ltd., where scope of jurisdiction of High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution to interfere with a finding of fact recorded by an expert was dealt with.

After recapitulating the legal position, the Bench observed that the administrative oversight in the present case should have been left to the executive. To quote,

"the process of evaluation of an IAS officer, more so a senior IAS officer entails a depth of expertise, rigorous and robust understanding of the evaluation matrix coupled with nuanced understanding of the proficiency required to be at the forefront of the bureaucracy. This administrative oversight ought to have been left to the executive on account of it possessing the requisite expertise and mandate for the said task."

In support of its view, it reasoned that overall grading and assessment of an IAS officer requires an in-depth understanding of various facets of an administrative functionary such as personality traits, tangible and quantifiable professional parameters. These may include, "the competency and ability to execute projects; adaptability; problem-solving and decision-making skills; planning and implementation capabilities; and the skill to formulate and evaluate strategy", the Court said.

It followed that the aforesaid indicative parameters are usually then analyzed by adopting a specialized evaluation matrix. Thereafter, they are synthesised by a competent authority to award an overall grade to the candidate at the end of the appraisal/evaluation.

In this backdrop, it was concluded that the High Court erred in contrasting and comparing the remarks and overall grades awarded to Khemka by three authorities (the Reporting Authority, the Reviewing Authority and the Accepting Authority). It entered a specialized domain without the requisite domain expertise and administrative experience to conduct an IAS Officer's evaluation, the Bench said.

It was added that the High Court ought not to have undertaken the exercise particularly since the Accepting Authority was yet to pronounce its decision qua Khemka's representation. 

Appearance: Senior Advocate Mukul Rohtagi; Snr AAGs Lokesh Sinhal and Alok Sangwan; AAG Dr. Hemant Gupta; AoRs Samar Vijay Singh and Ambhoj Kumar Sinha; Advocates Nikunj Gupta, Sumit Kumar Sharma, Rajat Sangwan, Vaibhav Yadav, Shivang Jain, Payal Gupta, Nitikaa Guptha, Keshav Mittal, Sabarni Som, Fateh Singh, Shreenath A. Khemka, and Ganesh A. Khemka

Case Title: The State of Haryana v. Ashok Khemka and Anr., SLP(C) No. 13972/2019

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 220

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