The Supreme Court recently ruled that a resignation tendered by an employee has to be formally accepted by the employer and this acceptance has to be communicated to the employee for it to be considered final. That means, if the employee who puts in his papers, decides to withdraw them before the employer has accepted them, his resignation will be considered not accepted.
The verdict was passed in a case involving a Railways employee who had worked at the Konkan Rail Corporation for over two decades (23 years). He put in his resignation in December of 2013 to be considered effective in a month’s time. However, the petitioner’s resignation letter was accepted only in the first week of April 2024, but there was no official acceptance letter or any communication whatsoever. To add to that, he was asked to report for work and he was alleged to be absent from duty without authorisation from 28 April 2024 to 18 May 2024. Therefore, he reported for work on 19 May, 2024.
When he withdrew his resignation, the Railways relieved him with effect from July 2024. This led to the employee approaching the High Court, which ruled in his favour and ordered that he be reinstated. However, the Railways appealed against the order, following which the Division Bench reversed the order.
Now, the Supreme Court has rightly observed that the very fact that the petitioner was told that he was absent from duty without authorisation (during April-May of 2024) proves that his resignation which was given in December 2023 was not accepted. Therefore, as the petitioner had pointed out, since his resignation wasn’t officially accepted, there was no question of ‘relieving’ him at all.
Additionally, abp Live reports that the petitioner had been in touch with the employer constantly, and had even showed up for duty when ordered to do so months after he had tendered the resignation. Therefore, there was no official indication of the acceptance of his resignation whatsoever. The SC upheld that an internal communication of acceptance cannot be considered as an official acceptance of resignation.
