Voluntary retirement takes effect if authority fails to decide within 3 months: HC

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has asserted that an employee’s request for voluntary retirement, once made after completion of 20 years of service, is deemed accepted if the competent authority does not refuse it within the prescribed three-month period. Dismissing an appeal filed by the State of Punjab, a Division Bench held that the rule itself “takes away mandatory character” of requiring express acceptance.

The ruling came in case of a Medical Laboratory Technician Grade-II at Government Medical College, Amritsar. The Bench was told that he had earlier availed a five-year leave under the State’s Self-Occupation Leave Scheme. He re-joined and submitted an application on November 18, 2014, seeking premature retirement from the next day citing his responsibility to care for his 80-year-old father.

As the request was made with only 24 hours’ notice, he enclosed a demand draft of amount equivalent to three months’ salary towards the shortfall in notice period. He continued to work till November 24, 2014, and the draft was encashed by the department on December 4, 2014. At the time of his application, no disciplinary proceedings were pending or contemplated against him. His request was duly forwarded by the principal of the Medical College to the director, Medical Education and Research.

But the department remained silent on his application for nearly a year before finally rejecting it on October 8, 2015. Thereafter, in March 2016, a draft chargesheet was issued to him on the allegation that he had absented himself from duty. In response, he submitted representations highlighting his domestic constraints. The medical college principal repeatedly wrote to the director recommending that his plea be treated with compassion and that he be considered as having retired from November 18, 2014.

Despite this, the director, by order dated December 18, 2018, treated him as having been absent since November 18, 2014.

“It is manifest from a bare reading of the Premature Retirement Rules, that Rule 3(3)(a) stipulates that an employee on completion of 20 years may retire from service after furnishing a notice of three months. Rule 3(3)(c) provides that in the event the competent authority does not refuse to grant permission for retirement before the expiry of the period specified in the application, the retirement would become effective from the date of expiry of the period specified in the notice,” the Bench asserted. The employee was represented by counsel Dhiraj Chawla.

The Bench added that the respondent-employee had submitted the application seeking voluntary retirement upon completion of 24 years of service and no order was passed within a period of three months. “We have no hesitation in holding that, in view of the referred to judgments, the application is deemed to have been accepted by the competent authority in terms of Rule 3(3)(c) of the Punjab Civil Services (Premature Retirement) Rules, 1975,” the Bench of Justice Anupinder Singh Grewal and Justice Deepak Manchanda observed.