Kathmandu, February 11:

The Supreme Court today stayed the promotion of 201 staff of the National Sports Council (NSC) and ordered it to attend before the apex court for the February 18 hearing.

A single bench of Justice Min Bahadur Rayamajhi issued the order following the initial hearing.

The bench also ordered the NSC to stop its further process about the promotion and attend the February 18 hearing so that the court would decide whether to extend the stay order.

The bench also directed the NSC to submit its written affidavit about the decision of promoting the staff within 15 days.

The bench was responding to the writ petitoins filed by typist Jhuna Devi Sharma and assistant accountant Balram Basnet on Friday. Challenging the NSC decision to promote 201 staff, the writ petitioners had moved the SC seeking its certiorari order.

Some 40 staff of the council had last week filed a complaint with the Ministry of Education and Sports regarding the NSC’s promotion, but the council did not felt necessary to wait for the ministry’s probe into the matter and handed over the promotion letters to the 40 of the 201 on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the officials of National Republic Sports Organisation (NRSO) gheraoed the council’s Administration Department after they found the registration department deserted when they went to register the order sheet at 3pm.

They locked the Administration Department chief Kamal Khanal till 6pm to press him to register the order sheet. They released Khanal only after he agreed to order his staff to register the letter tomorrow on today’s date.