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‘Is this your way of encouraging sportspersons’: SC chides Himachal govt
Pooja Thakur had applied for the job as a DSP, a Class 1 post, in 2015 under the 3% reservation policy for distinguished sportspersons
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the Himachal Pradesh government for making a kabbadi player, a gold medalist at the 2014 Asian Games, run from pillar to post, and rejected the state’s appeal against the relief granted to Pooja Thakur by the high court.
“Is this your way of encouraging sportspersons? Somebody who has won a gold medal in the Asian Games, you make her run from pillar to post for seven years. Is this the approach of the state while dealing with sportspersons,” a bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih told the state government.
Pooja Thakur applied for the job as a deputy superintendent of police (DSP), a Class 1 post, in 2015 under the 3% reservation policy for distinguished sportspersons. But her case was overlooked while other sportspersons, including a male kabaddi player, a woman cricketer and a shooter were recruited under the same quota. SShe was finally appointed in December 2020 as an excise and taxation officer. Thakur accepted the offer but insisted that she should be granted seniority from July 2015 when she filed her application.
A single bench of the Himachal Pradesh high court accepted her plea in April 2023 but the state challenged the ruling before a division bench. The high court again ruled in her favour and gave the state government four months to give her the seniority and other benefits from 2015. The high court also noted that the state cabinet considered the cases of other sportspersons but not Pooja Thakur “for undisclosed reasons”.
The state government filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against this high court ruling.
“Your chief minister should have adopted a practical approach… Let some sportspersons other than cricketers get some benefits. This is not a fit case to interfere under Article 136,” the top court told the Himachal Pradesh advocate general Anup Kumar Rattan on Thursday. Article 136 grants discretion to the Supreme Court to entertain an appeal against a judgment or order passed by any court or tribunal in the country.
Rattan had argued that Thakur could not claim the seniority benefits for 2015-2020 since she hadn’t worked during this duration and had joined only in 2020.
But there were no clear answers why the state had kept her application pending since 2015 but appointed others as DSP, a point that the high court had also raised.
Kabbadi player and Arjuna awardee Ajay Thakur was appointed DSP in 2017, woman cricket wicket-keeper Shushma Verma in April 2018 for her performance in the ICC Women’s World Cup and shooter VIjay Kumar in 2019.
The state government had tried to reason in the high court that there was no post of DSP left to accommodate Thakur but the court decided that just because she was initially granted appointment as an Inspector would not come in the way of counting her seniority as the reservation policy of May 28, 1999 provided for 3% reservation against Class I and Class II posts to sportspersons.
