The Hindu     26.07.2012

Bench to the rescue of corporation employee accused of sedition

 The Madras High Court Bench here has come to the rescue
of a Tiruchi Municipal Corporation employee who was placed under
suspension from service between 1991 and 2000 for having pasted posters
criticising the Centre and denied wages for the period even after the
criminal case was dropped and departmental action did not end up in any
kind of punishment.

Allowing a writ petition filed by
the male nursing assistant M. Mohan in 2007, Justice D. Hariparanthaman
directed the Corporation Commissioner to pay the back wages within
eight weeks. It was held that the petitioner was entitled to
regularisation of the suspension period as he was not imposed with any
punishment.

Thillai Nagar Police in Tiruchi had
arrested the petitioner on September 17, 1991 after booking him under
Sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between two groups on
grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language and so
on) and 153B (imputations or assertions prejudicial to national
integration) of the Indian Penal Code.

The petitioner
was remanded to judicial custody the next day and remained in jail
until being enlarged on bail on October 9, 1991. The Corporation issued a
charge memo to him on October 8, 1991 and placed him under suspension
on November 13, 1991 for having been lodged in jail for more than 48
hours.

On July 16, 1996, the police decided to drop
the criminal action initiated against him. The decision was also
accepted by a Judicial Magistrate. Even after that, the Corporation did
not revoke the suspension order. Hence, he filed a writ petition before
the Principal Seat of the High Court in Chennai in 1999.

Pursuant
to the institution of the writ petition, the local body passed an order
on February 18, 2000 revoking the suspension order without prejudice to
continue the departmental proceedings. Thereafter, he filed another
writ petition in 2006 ruing that his suspension period had not been
regularised.

It led to an order passed by the
Corporation on June 21, 2007 wherein it was stated out of eight years
five months and four days of suspension period, two months and 25 days
would be considered as earned leave and the rest as leave without wages.
It was this order that was under challenge in the present writ
petition.

Disagreeing with the order passed by the
civic body, the judge said that the petitioner could neither be deprived
of wages for the suspension period nor forced to forgo the earned leave
in his credit when the criminal action was dropped and no punishment
was imposed in the departmental proceedings.

“It is a
different matter, if the departmental action had resulted in imposition
of penalty. In fact, the departmental action did not proceed after the
issuance of charge memo. No enquiry was conducted, no witness was
examined, no documents were marked and no enquiry report was obtained.

“The
respondent had straightaway passed the order regularising the period of
suspension and deprived wages from December 11, 1991 to February 21,
2000 and also treated the earlier period as earned leave… I am of the
view that this order is highly arbitrary and in violation of principles
of natural justice,” the judge said.