Court No. - 34
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 31639 of 2013 Petitioner :- Anjani Kumar Respondent :- State Public Service Tribunal And 2 Ors. Counsel for Petitioner :- Sunil Kumar Srivastava,Ashok Khare Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.
Hon'ble Sudhir Agarwal,J. Hon'ble Bachchoo Lal,J.
1. Heard Sri Ashok Khare, Senior Advocate, assisted by Sri Sunil Kumar Srivastava, learned counsel for petitioner and learned Standing Counsel for respondents.
2. Present writ petition has been directed against judgement and order dated 30.4.2013 passed by State Public Services Tribunal, Lucknow ( hereinafter referred to as 'Tribunal" ) dismissing Claim Petition No. 1323 of 2012 as barred by Limitation.
3. Petitioner was imposed punishment of 'Censure' by order dated 7.6.2003. Claim Petition against punishment order could have been filed before Tribunal within one year from the date of impugned order under Section 5 of U.P. Public Services ( Tribunals) Act, 1976 ( hereinafter referred to as "Act, 1976") but the same was not filed within prescribed period. Petitioner approached Public Services Tribunal ( hereinafter referred to as "Tribunal" ) after a considerable delay of about 9 years. On ground of latches and delay, Tribunal has rejected Claim Petition of petitioner as highly time barred and not maintainable, by the impugned order dated 30.4.2013.
4. Learned counsel for the petitioner contended that even though order dated 7.6.2003 has attained finality on the ground of limitation still order is illegal inasmuch as no proper enquiry was conducted against the petitioner before passing said order.
5. Submissions on behalf of petitioner is wholly misconceived and does not stand to reason. Once it has been found that petitioner kept mum for almost 9 years after passing impugned order and only thereafter, he approached Tribunal, Tribunal was well justified in rejecting Claim Petition being highly time barred. Punishment order, therefore, has attained finality. Since punishment order was passed in year 2003, therefore, we find no error in the order of Tribunal rejecting Claim Petition as highly time barred.
6. Petition lacks merits and is hereby dismissed.
Order Date :- 27.4.2018/Gss