The fi­nal ap­peal over the Gov­ern­ment's move to ex­tend the term of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher by a year be­fore she at­tained re­tire­ment age last year has been dis­missed.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered a short while ago the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil re­ject­ed the ap­peal brought by po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj af­ter his case was dis­missed by High Court Judge Ricky Rahim and the Court of Ap­peal, ear­li­er this year.

The Law Lords found that the case was prop­er­ly de­cid­ed by the lo­cal courts.

"For all these rea­sons which are sim­i­lar to those giv­en by the Court of Ap­peal, 

sec­tion 75(a) of the 2006 Act is not un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and there is noth­ing un­law­ful in the de­ci­sion of the Pres­i­dent to ex­tend the ser­vice of the Com­mis­sion­er be­yond her nor­mal 

re­tire­ment age," La­dy Sim­ler said.

In the law­suit, Ma­haraj chal­lenged a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Cab­i­net to ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher's term by a year un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, be­fore she reached re­tire­ment age on May 15, last year. 

The leg­is­la­tion em­pow­ers the Pres­i­dent to ex­tend the term of a first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer, who is due to re­tire, if it is in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to do so. 

Po­lice of­fi­cers can re­ceive two fur­ther one-year ex­ten­sions based on an­nu­al per­for­mance re­views. 

Ma­haraj's le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan con­tend­ed that the pro­vi­sion is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gives the PolSC the pow­er to rec­om­mend the ap­point­ment or re­moval of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCPs) to be ap­proved by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

They point­ed out that the con­sti­tu­tion­al process sought to en­sure that there is no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. 

In re­sponse to the case, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Cab­i­net re­lied on an af­fi­davit from Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion Corey Har­ri­son, who serves as sec­re­tary for the  PolSC. 

In the doc­u­ment, Har­ri­son claimed that the PolSC was aware of Hare­wood-Christo­pher's age and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her re­ceiv­ing an ex­ten­sion when she was first ap­point­ed in Feb­ru­ary, last year, af­ter act­ing in the post pre­vi­ous­ly.  

He al­so point­ed out that sim­i­lar ex­ten­sions were af­ford­ed to for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers James Philbert and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob. 

Af­ter the case was re­ject­ed by the Ap­peal Court in May, Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­ceived a sec­ond ex­ten­sion.

Ma­haraj was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, and Vishaal Siewsaran. 

Rishi Dass, SC, and Vanes­sa Gopaul rep­re­sent­ed the AG's Of­fice.