Delhi High Court
The Commissioner Of Sales Tax vs Sh. Chaman Lal And Anr. on 6 February, 2007
Author: M Mudgal
Bench: M Mudgal, A Suresh
JUDGMENT
Mukul Mudgal, J.
1. Rule DB.
2. With the consent of both the parties, the Writ Petition is taken up for final hearing.
3. This Writ Petition challenges the order dated 17th August, 2004 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench (hereinafter referred to as the 'Tribunal') in OA No.2711 of 2003. The Respondent was served with the following charge:
That the said Shri Chaman Lal while functioning as Record Keeper during the period May, 1983 in Ward 29 of Sales Tax Department, committed misconduct in as much as he failed to submit the complete record of M/s. India Plywood Store, 627/13, Loni Road, Shahdara to the A.S.T.O. Shri Sachdeva on 30.5.1983 for issuance of forms. The Assessing Authority, Shri Sachdeva issued 15-ST-1 forms to the said dealer on 30.5.1983 on the forms issued application of the dealer but subsequently the forms issue sheet and forms issue application were found missing from the record file of the dealer. Being a record Keeper was.... File of the said dealer and failed to keep and maintain the record in a proper manner which resulted in misplacement of the relevant documents form the record.
Thus, Shri Chaman Lal had shown negligence and dereliction to duty by not keeping the record file of the said dealer in a proper manner, thereby failed to maintain devotion to duty and acted in a manner unbecoming of a Government Servant and contravened Sub clauses (ii) & and (iii) of Sub rule 1 of Rule 3 of CCS (CONDUCT) Rules, 1964.
4. The Tribunal has allowed the OA on the ground that the incident pertains to the year 1983 and the chargesheet was served belatedly in the year 1992. The Tribunal relied upon the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of State of Madhya Pradesh v. Bani Singh and Anr. 1990 (2) SLR 798 the relevant paragraph of which judgment reads as under:
4. The appeal against the order dated 16.12.1987 has been filed on the ground that the Tribunal should not have quashed the proceedings merely on the ground of delay and laches and should have allowed the enquiry, to go on the decide the matter on merits. We are unable to agree with this contention of the learned Counsel. The irregularities which were the subject matter of the enquiry is said to have taken place between the years 1975-1977. It is not the case of the department that they were not aware of the said irregularities, if any, and came to know it only in 1987. According to them even in irregularities, and the investigations were going on since then. If that is so, it is unreasonable to think that they would have taken more than 12 years to initiate the disciplinary proceedings as stated by the Tribunal. There is no satisfactory explanation for the inordinate delay in issuing the charge memo and we are also of the view that it will be unfair to permit the departmental enquiry to the proceeded with at this stage. In any case, there are not grounds to interfere with the Tribunal's orders and accordingly we dismiss the appeal.
5. The Tribunal also relied upon the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in "Registrar of Cooperative Societies Madras and Anr. v. F.X. Fernando reported as .
6. While relying upon the aforesaid judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court, the Tribunal arrived at the conclusion that there should be no inordinate delay in the departmental proceedings and they should be initiated at the earliest. The Tribunal noticed that the incident had occurred in 1983, the chargesheet was served in 1992, the penalty imposed in 1999 and the appeal dismissed only after three years and that too after the Petitioner approached the CAT for expediting the proceedings. The Tribunal also noted the prejudice caused to the delinquent, particularly when it was not shown that the delinquent was delaying the proceedings in any manner.
7. The learned Counsel for the Petitioner submitted that the plea of delay was not raised by the respondent which has been countered by the learned Counsel for the Respondent by submitting that in the earlier round of litigation where that the Lt. Governor had procrastinated in deciding the appeal for three years, this plea had already been taken. In support of his contention, the learned Counsel for the Respondent has also relied upon the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in case M.V. Bijlani v. Union of India and Ors. where the law laid down by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in State of M.P. V. Bani Singh (supra) was followed.
8. In any case, this Court has permitted filing of the additional affidavit to explain the delay showing that no injustice was occasioned to the Petitioner.
9. We have perused the explanation given in the additional affidavit which pertains to the involvement of certain other employees. The explanation clearly noticed that the memo was issued to the Respondent on 1.12.1986 and replied on 13.12.1986. Thereafter from 1986 till 1992 there is no satisfactory explanation for the delay except the movement of the file between the various departments of the Petitioner and the Directorate of Vigilance. This is no ground or explanation for the laches. Thus, present case is clearly covered by the principles of law laid down in the judgments of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in M.V. Bijlani v.Union of India and State of M.P. v. Bani Singh.
10. In our view this is not an explanation particularly in the light of the fact that even in deciding the appeal the Petitioner has been recalcitrant for three years and had to be plodded by the order of the CAT to decide the appeal expeditiously. Even otherwise the charge is at best of not maintaining the record properly and this is not a charge of such a nature which needs to be resurrected almost nine years later. Taking all the above facts in consideration, no case of interference with the order of the Tribunal is made out.
The Writ Petition is dismissed.
