The Royal Gazette (15th July 2022) reports on a ruling rejecting claims by a police officer that he had been the victim of discrimination has been upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Detective Sergeant David Bhagwan had called for a judicial review into Bermuda Police Service promotion procedures after failing to pass the Sergeant to Inspector interview panel in 2018.
The Court of Appeal ruled that none of Mr Bhagwan’s grounds for appeal “has presented any basis for departing from the findings in the judgment in relation to the issues raised by them”.
In his appeal, Mr Bhagwan alleged that the methodology used to calculate scores for the promotions exam was “illegal and irrational”.
But the Appeal panel concluded: “The evidence was that it was a tried and proven assessment tool which had been used for a number of previous rounds of assessment for promotion, going back to 2012.”
During the initial hearing it was agreed that Mr Bhagwan’s final interview score of 55 per cent was an error and that it should have been amended to 56.68 per cent – still below the pass mark of 60 per cent.
In his appeal, Mr Bhagwan complained that Mr Justice Hargun was wrong to become involved in calculating the correct score.
This ground was also dismissed by the Appeal judges, who concluded: “This complaint, that the Chief Justice ‘entered into the arena’ for determining the appellant’s score, is baseless and must be rejected.
“There was no element of unfairness. The appellant pointed out an error which the court quite openly sought to resolve and when resolved showed that his overall score still fell short of the mark.
“Nothing involved in the conduct of the hearing can properly be said to have affected the outcome of his assessment.”
CLICK HERE for the full report published in the Royal Gazette.