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.
