CAT censures govt for appointing Jayakumar as IMG director, says IPS officers cannot be excise commissioners

Thiruvananthapuram: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on Friday said that the appointment of retired IAS officer and former Chief Secretary K Jayakumar as 'Director' of Institute of Management in Government (IMG)  was a case of "clandestine redesignation". The CAT was scathingly critical of the LDF government and termed Jayakumar's appointment to a cadre post a "colourable and malicious exercise of executive functions". 

Nonetheless, Jayakumar vacated the post on January 7 this year, after taking over as the Travancore Devaswom Board president. He was the only retired IAS officer to occupy the post in IMG since it started in 1981. He served as 'Director' for nearly seven years, from June 17, 2018, to January 7, 2026. A serving IAS officer, Tinku Biswal, is now the IMG Director General.

The CAT also ruled that IPS officers cannot hold the post of Excise Commissioner. Additional Director General of Police M R Ajith Kumar is now the Excise Commissioner.

The top post in IMG, 'Director General',  is a cadre post that could be occupied only by IAS officers. To ease Jayakumar into the top role, the LDF government created a new post called 'Director'. 

A similar strategy was followed for Kerala Institute of Labour Administration. KILA's 'Director' is a cadre post meant only for IAS officers. So the government created a new post called 'Director General' and appointed Joy Elamon, a non-IAS officer.

Both these appointments, along with the appointment of IPS officers as Excise Commissioner, were questioned by the Kerala IAS Association in the CAT.

The Tribunal held that if at all the government wanted to appoint a retired IAS officer or a non-IAS officer to posts reserved exclusively for IAS officers, it could be done "only after de-caderisation of those posts from All India Service." No such proposal has been made to the Centre by the state government, the CAT noted.

The state government came up with a deceptive argument before the CAT. It conceded that the post of Director General in IMG was a post included in the IAS (Fixation of Cadre Strength) Regulations, 1955. But it said Jayakumar was appointed as 'Director', a non-cadre post, and therefore it was "legal and valid".

The same defence was pushed for choosing Joy Elamon as KILA 'Director General'. He held the post for seven years. However, the High Court had struck down Elamon's appointment in 2024. 

The Tribunal said that in both IMG and KILA, the original cadre posts were kept vacant, and this was not intimated to the Centre. "It is not clear how financial sanction was obtained for creating such posts, or how they were discharging functions statutorily vested with such posts," the CAT said in its order.

It said that the Kerala government was not empowered to redesignate the posts of "de jure Chief Executive officers" of training institutions of national importance like IMG and KILA by resorting to "clandestine redesignation of cadre posts".

"Both these posts were filled up by an illegal process of redesignation. Ineligible persons were inducted to head the two prestigious institutions, which were to be filled up by IAS cadre posts," the CAT order said, and added: "Evidently, they were de facto exercising all the functions of Director of KILA and Director General of IMG. Virtually, it was a colourable and malicious exercise of executive functions," it said.

As for the Excise Commissioner post, the government argued that it was not a post included in the IAS (Fixation of Cadre Strength) Regulations, 1955. 

Further, it was said that the functions of the Excise Department involved prevention, detection and investigation of serious offences, all of which were closely associated with the Police. Therefore, it was contended that a senior police officer was best placed to function as Excise Commissioner. 

However, the CAT found that the Excise Commissioner had other functions like administration and collection of revenue that were not exactly the strengths of the police. Further, the Excise Commissioner comes under the Taxes Department. The CAT also noted that before 2016, when Rishiraj Singh IPS was appointed the Excise Commissioner, the post was held by IAS officers. In fact, the first Excise Commissioner was John Mathai IAS.

Moreover, the post of Excise Commissioner is not included in the IPS (Fixation of Cadre Strength) Regulations, 1955. There is Transport Commissioner in the list, not Excise Commissioner.