New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held that the suitability of a candidate for promotion cannot be determined by mechanically averaging the marks obtained in the Performance Mapping Scheme (PMS) and the 'Work Report', and that such an exercise, in the absence of any rule prescribing it, amounts to courts rewriting the applicable regulations.
The bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Manmohan was dealing with an appeal filed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) against a Karnataka High Court order that had upheld a direction of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Bengaluru Bench, for a scientist's promotion.
The respondent, a CSIR scientist, had approached the CAT after the Assessment Committee found him 'not fit for promotion' to the post of Senior Scientist, having awarded him 82% marks on his Work Report against the threshold of 85%. The respondent's case was that his PMS score for the relevant years exceeded 92%, and that Paragraph 3(b) of a CSIR Circular dated 01.06.2011, which required assessment 'based on the Annual Performance/PMS and Work Report', meant that the two scores had to be averaged, which would have taken him above the threshold. The CAT accepted this interpretation and directed his promotion, and the High Court, while agreeing with the CAT's reasoning, modified the relief to a direction for a review Departmental Promotion Committee instead of a mandamus for promotion.
Before the Supreme Court, CSIR argued that the 2001 Recruitment and Promotion Rules provide for a two-stage process: an Internal Screening Committee shortlists eligible candidates based on their PMS scores, after which the Assessment Committee independently evaluates the Work Report and awards its own marks. It was contended that Paragraph 3(b) only required the Assessment Committee to consider both PMS and the Work Report, and did not mandate that the two be averaged to arrive at a final score.
The court agreed with this submission, holding that Paragraph 3(b) does not prescribe any method by which the Assessment Committee is to arrive at its marks, and that reading in a requirement of averaging would mean adding words to the provision that are simply not there. The bench observed:
“The view taken by CAT and the High Court that the Assessment Committee would have to award average / mean of the marks of APRs/PMS and the 'Work Report' to determine whether the candidate is above or below the threshold, in our view, amounts to adding words to a provision.”
Rejecting the respondent's argument that the absence of a prescribed weightage for PMS and Work Report scores would render the assessment process arbitrary and violative of Article 14, the court held that Paragraph 3(b) provides sufficient guidance by requiring consideration of both factors, and that how much weight is to be assigned to each is a matter best left to the domain experts constituting the Assessment Committee. The court reasoned that the demands of a scientist's Work Report can vary significantly depending on the complexity of the research undertaken, and that such an evaluation cannot be reduced to a fixed arithmetical formula. It held:
“Suitability for promotion must be left to be determined by the domain experts and, in absence of rules, a degree of latitude would have to be provided to them in their assessment of suitability of a particular candidate for promotion.”
The court noted that there were no allegations of mala fide against any member of the Assessment Committee, that the respondent was in any event later found suitable and promoted, and that there was no serious challenge to the vires of Paragraph 3(b) itself.
Accordingly, the appeals were allowed, and the orders of the CAT and the High Court were set aside, with the original application filed by the respondent before the CAT being dismissed.
Case Title: The Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research & Ors. v. Anil Earnest, Civil Appeal No(s). 8790-8791 of 2026 (Arising out of SLP (C) No(s). 10821-10822/2024)
