Dalbir Singh Teji v. State Of Punjab And Others


  


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2 "16. On the first question, viz., as to when for the purposes of the sealed cover procedure the disciplinary/criminal proceedings can be said to have com menced, the Full Bench of the Tribunal has held that it is only when a charge memo in a disciplinary proceedings or a chargesheet in a criminal prosecution is issued to the employee that it can be said that the

departmental proceed ings/criminal prosecution is initiated against the employee. The sealed cover procedure is to be resorted to only after the charge memo/charge sheet is issued. The pendency of preliminary investigation prior to that stage will not be sufficient to enable the authorities to adopt the sealed cover procedure. We are in agreement with the Tribunal on this point. The contention advanced by the learned counsel for the appellant authorities that when there are serious allegations and it takes time to collect necessary evidence to prepare and issue charge memo/charge sheet, it would not be in the interest of the purity of administration to reward the employee with a promotion, increment etc. does not impress us. The acceptance of this contention would result in injustice to the employees in many cases.

As has been the experience so far, the preliminary investigations take an inordinately long time and particularly when they are initiated at the instance of the interested persons, they are kept pending deliberately. Many times they never result in the issue of any charge memo/charge sheet. If the allegations are serious and the authorities are keen in investigating them, ordinarily it should not take much time to collect the relevant evidence and finalize the charges. What is further, if the charges are that serious, the authorities have the power to suspend the employee under the relevant rules, and the suspension by itself permits a resort to the sealed cover procedure. The authorities thus are not without a ,remedy. It was then contended on behalf of the authorities that conclusions nos.

1 and 4 of the Full Bench of the Tribunal are inconsistent with each other.

"(1) consideration for promotion, selection grade, crossing the efficiency bar or higher scale of pay cannot be withheld merely on the ground of pendency of a disciplinary or criminal proceedings against an official;

(2) ................

(3) ................

(4) the sealed cover procedure can be resorted only after a charge memo is served on the concerned official or the charge sheet filed before the criminal court and not before." !+ B

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-7-- kanchan

 Whether speaking/reasoned : Yes Whether reportable : No