HC rejects judge couple's plea  against premature retirement

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has upheld the decision of the Punjab Government for a retiring judge couple prematurely, stressing that yardsticks in the case of judicial officers are different and stricter.

However, the court has quashed the orders whereby the suspension period of the husband judge was treated as leave and an amount of Rs 23,86,664 was ordered to be recovered from the subsistence allowance already paid to him.

The petitioners -- Ravinder Kumar Condal and his wife Asha Condal who were working as Civil Judge Senior Division and Additional District Judge, respectively, in Punjab -- had approached the high court seeking quashing of the orders passed by the state government, retiring them prematurely, on the court's recommendations.

Ravinder Kumar Condal prayed for quashing of the order dated September 7, 2015, whereby he was directed to be prematurely retired w.e.f October 5, 2015. In another petition, his wife also challenged the order for retiring her prematurely w.e.f. November 29, 2017. The administrative committee of the high court after taking into consideration overall service record, work and conduct, recommended that the petitioners be not allowed to continue in service beyond the age of 50. Before the orders retiring the petitioners prematurely were passed, certain complaints were received against them.

In pursuance of the complaints, disciplinary proceedings were initiated against both the petitioners.

Counsels appearing on behalf of the petitioners argued that perusal of the confidential reports of the petitioners would show that they had an unblemished career and merely one report, which is average, cannot be made the basis of retiring the petitioners prematurely.

After hearing the arguments, Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor said: "We do not find force in the argument that action of the respondents in retiring the petitioners prematurely, is solely based upon disciplinary proceedings, which have not attained finality. After examining the ACRs, we are of the view that the observations regarding integrity were not merely based upon the disciplinary proceedings, besides the fact that other shortcomings like punctuality, shirking or work etc. were also observed."

However, the Bench said the full court decided that the disciplinary proceedings against the petitioners was to be kept in abeyance, then the decision to treat the period of suspension as leave of kind due and recovery and the orders of recovery, basis thereupon, couldn't sustain.

The decision to order recovery, after the premature retirement and keeping the disciplinary proceedings in abeyance, would be unwarranted iniquitous and against the basic tenets enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

As a result of the above discussion and findings, the petition of the wife judge is dismissed, while the petition of the husband judge is partially allowed and the orders for recovery from the subsistence allowance already paid to him are set aside.