The obligations and authorities do not change following the change of the Deputy Head of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency
17:48, June 28, 2018 | News, Own news
On April 20, 2018, N. S., who had had a disability degree since 2013, was deprived of the disability degree and filed an appeal against that decision with the Medical and Social Expertise Agency.
With the support of HCA Vanadzor, N. S. submitted an administrative appeal to the Deputy Head of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency on June 6, 2018 and, as the tenure of Head of the Agency A. Soghoyan is temporarily terminated, and, at that moment, Harutyun Harutyunyan was mentioned as the Deputy Head on the official website of the Agency, the appeal was sent to him.
On June 15, 2018, a few days following the submission of the appeal, N. S. received a note from the Deputy Head of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency, according to which “the appeal is being returned as […] the Deputy Head of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency is Ms. Nune Bagrati Shahverdyan.”
It is not mentioned in the note what legislative act Ms. Shahverdyan based the return of the citizen’s administrative appeal on.
Under Article 33 of the RA Law on Fundamentals of Administrative Action and Administrative Proceedings, the application is returned if it is neither within the jurisdiction of the administrative body that received it, nor within the jurisdiction of another administrative body.
In the given case, the issue raised by the appeal is within the jurisdiction of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency. Even if it were not, they would have to readdress the application to a relevant body; therefore, the Deputy Head of the Medical and Social Expertise Agency did not have any grounds to return it.
Through this, Ms. Shahverdyan violated the principle of lawfulness of administrative action, prohibition of abuse of formal requirements and prohibition of arbitrariness and delayed the examination of the appeal through formal administrative action.
With the support of HCA Vanadzor, N. S. submitted a second appeal to the relevant body, this time to Nune Shahverdyan. In a note enclosed to the appeal, she stated that the RA Law on Administrative Action and Administrative Proceedings does not establish the ground that N. Shahverdyan made a reference to for returning an appeal.