When departmental proceedings are still pending against an employee, they cannot be made to retire compulsorily simply based on the charges labeled against them said the Patna High Court.
The case involved Mehfooz Alam, a Class-III employee employed at the Governor’s Secretariat, Bihar as a daily wager in 1991 and later regularised as a lower division clerk (LDC)in 2008. In 2017, he was served with allegations and then a charge sheet in 2018. Four months after the charge sheet he was mandatorily asked to retire while the departmental proceedings were still underway. Not only was the retirement order premature, the Court ruled that such a retirement was not justified under Rule 74 of the Bihar Service Code.
The Division Bench comprising Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy affirmed the decision of the Single Bench ruling that it would be wrong and unfair to force an employee to retire based on the charges levelled against them while departmental proceedings were pending.
As per the Patna HC, compulsory retirement can only be ordered based on the authorities’ subjective satisfaction. With proceedings still pending there is no way the authorities could have developed a subjective satisfaction to mandate retirement.
The Patna HC also referred to the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation judgment, asserting that compulsory retirement can only be ordered on the basis of overall performance and not on particular accusations that are still being investigated.
