Inordinate delay in dept inquiry vitiates entire proceedings, rules HC

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that inordinate delay in initiating departmental proceedings is sufficient to vitiate the entire disciplinary action. It creates room for allegations of mala fides, bias and misuse of power, besides causing serious prejudice to the delinquent officer in mounting his defence, it said.

The ruling by Justice Harpreet Singh Brar of the high court came in the case where the petitioner-employee, charge-sheeted in September 2014 just months before his retirement, was exonerated by the inquiry officer. Despite this, the punishing authority imposed a 5 per cent cut in his pension for one year in October 2018 “without assigning reasons for dissenting from the inquiry officer’s report”. The appellate authority, too, the Bench noted, dismissed the appeal without dealing with the findings of the inquiry officer.

Justice Brar added that the procedure established under the relevant rules and principles settled by the Supreme Court had crystalised the principles that “whenever the disciplinary authority disagrees with the inquiry authority on any article of charge, before it records its own findings on such charge, it must record its reasons for such disagreement”.

Justice Brar added that the principles of natural justice demanded the grant of opportunity of hearing to a delinquent officer before the imposition of any punishment, once the punishing authority proposed to differ with the inquiry officer’s report. The failure to do so, coupled with the inordinate delay in issuing the charge-sheet, rendered the disciplinary proceedings “illegal, arbitrary and an abuse of the process of law”.

Allowing the petition, the High Court quashed the punishment order and directed the respondent-Corporation to release all consequential benefits to the petitioner with 6 per cent interest per annum from the date of filing of the writ petition till the actual realisation of the amount.