Court No. - 40
Case :- SPECIAL APPEAL DEFECTIVE No. - 1306 of 2020 Appellant :- State Of U.P. Through Principal Secretary, Public Works Department And 5 Others Respondent :- Jaswant Singh Yadav Counsel for Appellant :- Akanksha Sharma
Hon'ble Munishwar Nath Bhandari,J. Hon'ble Rohit Ranjan Agarwal,J.
Heard on the application for condonation of delay of 317 days.
We do not find any justification to condone the delay as the application cannot be allowed to condone the delay due to administrative reason in view of recent judgment of Apex Court in Special Leave Petition (Civil) Diary No.971 of 2020 (State of Uttar Pradesh & Anr. vs. Prem Chandra) decided on 27.11.2020. However, before passing final order on the application, we have even touched the merit of the case and find no error in the judgment so as to cause interference.
It is a case where a Senior Clerk was served with a charge sheet having allegation of default in seeking verification of Fixed Deposit Receipt (in short "FDR") from the Bank after it was given by the Contractor pursuant to the auction. It is a fact that FDR given by the Contractor remained in the custody of the Executive Engineer who was also subjected to disciplinary action and entire money of FDR have been recovered from him. The petitioner has been held responsible for default in seeking verification of FDR from the Bank without showing his responsibility and thereby Enquiry Officer exonerated him from all the charges. The Disciplinary Authority recorded disagreement to the findings of Enquiry Officer and after issuing notice, order of punishment was passed.
Learned Single Judge has caused interference in the order after minutely examining the allegations as well as issue of disagreement. It was found that the petitioner was not having access to the FDR lying in the custody of officer, thus, could have sought its verification from the Bank. The Disciplinary Authority overlooked the aforesaid and otherwise no cogent reason has been given for disagreement from the finding of the Enquiry Officer. Learned Single Judge has even took note of the fact that the FDR furnished by the Contractor was kept by the Executive Engineer in double lock and in absence of access to the FDR, the petitioner could not have sought its verification from the Bank. Thus even if he was not having duty to seek verification of the FD, it was not possible in absence of its availability with the petitioner.
In view of the above, we do not find any merit in the appeal for assailing the judgment of learned Single Judge. Thus, the appeal is liable to be dismissed.
We do not find any justification even for condonation of the delay of almost one year in filing the appeal. Thus application for condonation of delay as well as appeal are accordingly dismissed.
Order Date :- 6.1.2021 KA