Court No. - 40
Case :- SPECIAL APPEAL DEFECTIVE No. - 998 of 2020 Appellant :- State Of U.P. And 3 Others Respondent :- Gayasi Lal Counsel for Appellant :- Pranab Kumar Ganguli,Rama Shanker Mishra Counsel for Respondent :- Rama Shanker Mishra
Hon'ble Munishwar Nath Bhandari,J. Hon'ble Rohit Ranjan Agarwal,J.
There is an application for condonation of delay of 359 days in filing the appeal.
Before addressing the application for condonation of delay, we thought it proper to see the merits of the appeal.
By this appeal, a challenge is made to the judgment dated 26.09.2019 whereby the writ petition preferred by the non- appellant was allowed.
It is a case where the non-appellant was subjected to disciplinary inquiry followed by an order of punishment. The non-appellant challenged the order of punishment by maintaining a claim petition before the State Public Service Tribunal, Lucknow. The claim petition of the petitioner was allowed and thereby the order of termination dated 25.04.1986 was quashed. The non-appellant was ordered to be continued in service with all consequential benefits. The State challenged the said order of Tribunal by maintaining a writ petition. The writ petition was partly allowed. It was to give a liberty to the State Government to proceed with the inquiry afresh and payment of back-wages was made subject to the outcome of the inquiry. The order quashing of termination was not interfered. A direction was, accordingly, given to serve the charge-sheet on the non-appellant within a period of one month. On the issuance of charge-sheet, a reply was to be filed by the delinquent within a month and then inquiry to be concluded within four months.
It is an admitted case that after the order of the High Court on a writ petition preferred by the State, the charge-sheet was served on the delinquent but thereupon no order of punishment was passed. The non-appellant was still not treated to be in service from the date of termination dated 25.04.1986 despite it being quashed by the Tribunal and no interference in the order of the Tribunal was made by the High Court other than to allow the State Government to proceed with the inquiry afresh. Since no order of punishment was passed after the reinstatement of the non-appellant, the non-appellant rightly claimed pensionary benefits by treating him to be in continuous service.
Appellants State has treated services of the non-appellant w.e.f. 15.04.2011 i.e. date of the reinstatement, on their own assumption, ignoring the fact that the order of punishment was set-aside by the Tribunal with all consequential benefits though interfered by the High Court with a view to give liberty to the respondents for inquiry afresh. It was with clear direction that the non-appellant would be restored in service though without back-wages rather payment of back-wages was to be made subject to the inquiry to be conducted by the Disciplinary Authority. Since the inquiry was not concluded before the retirement of non-appellant and as no order of punishment was passed, non-appellant herein could not have denied pension by treating him in service w.e.f. 15.04.2011.
The appellants have failed to take note of the rigour of the order passed by the State Public Service Tribunal setting aside the order of punishment with all consequential benefits and the order of High Court to make payment of back-wages subject to final outcome of the disciplinary inquiry and for that liberty for fresh inquiry was given with time schedule. The inquiry having not been concluded before the retirement and as per the schedule, the non-appellant rightly held entitle to pensionary benefits, thus, we find no reason to cause interference in the order of the learned Single Judge.
Appeal, accordingly, fails and is dismissed. Having no merit and otherwise substance in the application for condonation of delay, same is also rejected.
Order Date :- 8.1.2021 Shekhar