The Armed Forces Tribunal has instructed the Navy to constitute a special promotion board for S.S. Luthra, a nuclear submarine engineer, whose allegation that nepotism scuttled his career were upheld by the Supreme Court.
The tribunal order came when the Navy and Vice-Admiral P.K. Chaterjee (retd.), who is accused of undermining the careers of highly skilled nuclear engineers, returned to it after the Supreme Court refused to entertain their appeal.
“All assessments of the SRO [Vice-Admiral Chaterjee] in the confidential reports of Commander Luthra are hereby struck down and will be expunged from the officer’s records and quantified merit as recalculated and already approved by the Chief of the Naval Staff will replace the old quantified merit assessed by the SRO,” the tribunal said in its ruling.
Promotion denied
Commander Luthra was one of the 11 nuclear submarine engineers of the Navy trained in Russia to operate and maintain nuclear reactors. However, he and several others were denied promotion allegedly to favour Captain Agashe, son-in-law of Vice-Admiral Chaterjee, who was in the same promotion batch as Commander Luthra.
Vice-Admiral Chaterjee, then the Inspector-General, Nuclear Safety, was the Senior Reviewing Officer (SRO) for officers serving on the submarines INS Chakra and INS Arihant . He and the Navy had filed an appeal in the tribunal after a military tribunal indicted him in the case and imposed a fine of ₹5 lakh.
“Since the officer [Commander Luthra] has, of his own volition, already proceeded on premature retirement, if approved for promotion, the officer will be granted his rank from the original date of his batch, and will be entitled to full pension and all terminal benefits in his enhanced rank,” the ruling said.
Accepting his charge, the tribunal noted that Vice-Admiral Chatterjee, in his capacity as SRO, had shown favour to Capt. Agashe.
