Uttarakhand govt issued notice over not giving ACP to class IV staff

The secretary of school education and the director of elementary education were issued a contempt notice by the Uttarakhand high court on Thursday for not following the court’s earlier order over giving assured career promotion (ACP) benefits to Class IV employees.

The single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari gave the respondents three weeks to submit their responses. In its previous hearing on January 11, the HC had ordered the state to factor in the complete tenure of service of Class IV-level employees in an institution while extending assured career promotion (ACP) benefits.

The decision came as the court was hearing the writ petition filed by eight Class IV-level government employees.

The petitioners had told the court that they were appointed as Class IV employees in Government Inter College, Kapkot (Bageshwar), between 1987 and 1996. Back then, it was an unaided institution but in 2005, the school was provincialised (taken over by the state government).

The employees who joined after 2005 were given ACP benefits on the basis of their joining dates. However, the period of service of the petitioners was computed from the date the state government took control of the school and not from their actual appointment dates. Under the ACP scheme -- introduced by the central government in 1999 to deal with the problem of “genuine stagnation and hardship faced by the employees due to lack of adequate promotional avenues” -- employees are granted pay hikes on completion of 10, 18 and 26 years of regular service.