High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh in one of its recent judgments allowed a writ petition in a case where the petitioner was deprived of his promotion and penalised on the basis of a preliminary enquiry.
Observations were made by single judge bench of Justice M. A. Chowdhry.
Brief Facts of the Case:
In the case of Abdul Rehman Dar v. State of J&K & Anr, the petitioner is a government employee who was working as a senior assistant in J&K state school board of education. It was alleged that he had accepted an admission/ examination form of SSE (10th Class) which was filed at a later stage by a candidate and entertained the same, who had already passed SSE much earlier. In his defence it was claimed by the petitioner that he had no knowledge of the previous records of the candidate and acted under good faith as all the documents presented by the candidate seemed legitimate also had the seal of school to which the candidate belonged. Subsequently an enquiry committee was formed by the respondents to probe into the matter and held the petitioner to be responsible for such negligence in discharging his duty, and decided to withhold the promotion of the petitioner for two years from the date he becomes eligible for next promotion.
Aggrieved by the above order of the board, petitioner filed a writ petition before the High Court to challenge the validity of impugned order on the ground that he was not given a reasonable opportunity to be heard.
Petitioner’s Submissions:
Counsel for the petitioner submitted that holding departmental proceedings against the petitioner and penalising him on the findings of a quasi-judicial function and not an administrative function and that the authorities had failed to adhere to the statutory rules.
Petitioner relied upon the judgment in case of State of UP & Ors. v. Saroj Kumar Sinha and contended that rules of natural justice must be applied while holding departmental inquiries against a government employee which may result in imposition of penalties to ensure that he is treated justfully and no rights are violated. Further the counsel submitted that no government employee can be penalised on the findings of a preliminary enquiry without conducting a disciplinary enquiry.
High Court’s Observations:
The court while perusing the records observed that the departmental enquiry is an investigation made by the department under the legal standards which cannot be considered enough to impose penalties on the accused and stated that the respondents through enquiry committee had only conducted a preliminary enquiry and hastily acted in imposing the penalty without holding a subsequent disciplinary enquiry which shows that the respondents had not followed the regular established procedure and had not given the petitioner a reasonable opportunity to be heard.
The court further referred to the judgments in cases of Kuldeep Singh v. Commissioner of Police & Ors., Nirmala J.Jhala v. State of Gujarat & Anr, and Amalendu Ghosh v. North Eastern Railway (By The District Traffic Superintendent) , and contended that the respondents violated the principles of natural justice and had only conducted preliminary enquiry and penalised the petitioner on the sole basis of the same which is an abuse of power by the respondents, as no penalty can be imposed on the basis of preliminary conduct.
Court quashed the order of board with directions of refuting the penalty imposed on the petitioner. Writ petition was allowed.
CASE TITLE: Abdul Rehman Dar v. State of J&K & Anr.
CASE DETAILS: SWP No. 1147/2009
PRONOUNCED ON: 03.06.2022
CORUM: Justice M. A. Chowdhry
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