CAT stays recovery of salary imposed on UT XEN

Chandigarh, December 12

The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Chandigarh Bench, has stayed the UT Adviser’s order of recovery of salary imposed by way of punishment on Executive Engineer Anil Dhamija.

An electrical engineer, Dhamija had joined the Electricity Department as s Junior Engineer in June 1988 and was promoted as Junior Engineer in July 1997. He was promoted as AE in November 2001 and as assistant Executive Engineer in February 2007. On February 2, 2012, the applicant was promoted as Executive Engineer.

An order was passed by the department in April 2011 and nodal officers were appointed to update legal cases of the department. He was later cited as nodal officer in a case while he was not. He replied and informed about the same to his superintending engineer vide a letter informing about the nodal officers’ name and details. However, in May 2017, the Chief Engineer issued a show-cause notice to the applicant on the ground of not filing the reply, which resulted in imposition of a penalty of Rs 20,000 on the department. He was called to file a reply within a week failing which action would be initiated and the penalty amount will be deducted from him, without giving any further opportunity. A similar notice was issued to the SE (Electricity) and the AEE who were involved in the process. On June 2, he submitted reply to the notice explaining his position.

Via a letter in November from the office of the Chief Engineer, the order of imposition of penalty dated November 27 by the Adviser to UT Administrator was served to Dhamija. The punishment included a warning and also recovery of Rs 10,000 from him. Dhamija told CAT that nor does the Adviser have the power to do so, neither was any charge framed against him, as per procedure in such cases. CAT has issued a notice to the Administrator and the Chief Engineer and has, stayed the recovery of the amount from Dhamija’s salary. — TNS