SURINDER KUMAR SHARMA Vs. M.C.D.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner - Shri Surinder Kumar Sharma is presently working as Assistant Accounts Officer with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. In the year 1982, he was a Lower Division Clerk and in his such capacity, he made a note in a file concerning one Smt. Prem Kumari who was in occupation of Shed No. 27 in Madanpur Khadar, Delhi, little knowing that many years after the said note would become his nemesis. The note in question was to the following effect:

(2.) AFTER a decade and five years, to be precise, on 26th February, 1997, the aforesaid note came to haunt the petitioner. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi decided to hold an inquiry against him, on the allegation, that he deliberately and with mala fide intention committed an act of omission by issuing a demand notice in the name of Smt. Prem Kumari, daughter-in-law of the original allottee without getting mutation approved from the competent authority in favour of Smt. Prem Kumari as required under the procedure prescribed for such jobs. Needless to say, the petitioner denied the allegation. In view of his denial, inquiry was conducted against him which culminated in the imposition of penalty of 'reduction in time scale of pay by two stages for a period of three years with cumulative effect'. He preferred an appeal against the penalty so imposed but with no success. It is the order imposing the penalty and the order rejecting his appeal against which he has preferred the present writ petition.

(3.) IT is submitted by learned counsel for the respondent that there is a qualitative difference between the case of the petitioner and that of Shri Ramesh Singh inasmuch as, while the petitioner by participating in the inquiry took a chance of a favourable decision and did not immediately prefer a writ petition when the charge-sheet was issued to him, Shri Ramesh Singh approached this Court immediately upon issuance of the charge-sheet. Should the case of the petitioner be treated differently from that of Shri Ramesh Singh merely because he faced an inquiry on a similar charge while Shri Ramesh Singh did not.