Mumbai: The Bombay high court has refused an immediate stay on the home department’s decision to elevate 154 low-rank police employees to police sub-inspectors (PSIs) in the police service.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi was hearing a petition filed by Santosh Rathod, a police personnel, opposing the recruitment of 154 police personnel who were elevated by the state government from police sepoys to PSIs.

According to the petition, all these candidates belonged to the scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribe (ST), and other backward caste (OBC) categories, and were alr-eady serving at a lower rank in the state police force. He questioned how the state could promote candidates based on reservation when there was no such provision under police rules. He termed such promotion undeserving and sought that these appointments be quashed. He also alleged that the state government had wrongly interpreted the Supreme Court’s order and given reservation in government services.

On October 8, 2018, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was invited to the Nashik Police Academy where the guard of honour was received by 817 PSIs, including these 154 PSIs.

After the state government’s decision to promote these 154 candidates, Rathod, along with Mandar Patil and M.S. Radiye challenged the said decision in the Maharashtra Administrat-ive Tribunal (MAT). On October 9, 2018, the MAT also raised the same qu-estion how promotion had been given when th-ere was no such law, and passed an interim stay. Following the MAT’s ord-er, the director general of police told the candidates to resume their original duties and asked them to vacate their rooms at the police academy.