The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will on Monday consider a request from the Haryana government to promote 27 Haryana Civil Services (HCS) officers to the IAS cadre. The HCS officers include one who got a breather recently with the Punjab and Haryana High Court staying vigilance bureau chargesheet against him.With Haryana facing a shortage of IAS officers — against the sanctioned strength of 225, the state currently has only 169 such officers in service — it has urged the UPSC to consider promoting HCS officers to IAS. The Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) of the UPSC will take up the matter in a meeting scheduled for July 14.In 2023, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had filed a chargesheet in a Hisar court, alleging irregularities in the recruitment of the 2002 HCS batch, which has hindered the promotion of several officers in recent years. Eight of the 27 HCS officers — whose names have been forwaded to the UPSC for promotions — have been named in the chargesheet.One of them, Jagdeep Dhanda, recently approached the high court alleging that he has been “implicated in the impugned FIR and chargesheet has been filed against him for extraneous reasons and with mala fide intentions”.A few years back too, the Haryana government had sent a proposal to the UPSC to consider HCS officers for promotion to IAS. Dhanda’s name figured in that list too. The selection committee meeting was fixed for December 6, 2022, but could not be held. It was claimed on the behalf of Dhanda that “to exclude certain officers from zone of consideration, the affected parties managed to influence the government to send a vigilance report concerning the FIR to the UPSC on December 22, 2022. It was also claimed that “he (Dhanda) was not even named in the said vigilance report, nor was any allegation of any kind levelled against him”.Meanwhile, after 18 years of registration of the FIR regarding alleged irregularities in the recruitment, the Vigilance Bureau filed a chargesheet in the Hisar court in January 2023. Dhanda’s counsel contended that “the entire sequence shows that it was only to exclude the petitioner from the process of selection to IAS cadre that he has been included as an accused in the challan/chargesheet, though none of the ingredients of the alleged offences are established against him”.On the other hand, the state counsel submitted that “the petitioner (Dhanda) remains an accused in the charge-sheet filed, and, therefore, has no right to be considered for promotion”. As the state counsel sought time to file a detailed reply to the petition, the High Court on July 11 ordered a stay on the “operation and effect of the impugned chargesheet”.Story continues below this adIn March this year, when the state government had approached the UPSC for the promotion of 27 HCS officers, it had conveyed that “the term chargesheet cannot be construed as the final form/report submitted under section 173 of the CrPC”.However, the UPSC had returned the promotion proposal after the Solicitor General did not agree with the state government’s opinion. “All the cases where the report under section 173 CrPC is filed, it would be treated as filing of the chargesheets as stipulated in ‘Regulations 5 (5) of the lAS Regulations, 1955,” the Solicitor General had opined.Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:HCS officerUPSC