TAMIL NADU GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION NILGIRIS DISTRICT Vs. DIRECTOR MEDICINE AND RURAL HEALTH SERVICES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BEING agitated over the orders of transfer issued to two co-employees during the non-transfer period, about 61 persons including Male Nursing Assistants, Female Nursing Assistants, Health Assistants, Sanitary workers and others applied for mass casual leave and struck work on 2.1.1999. All these persons are governed by special rules for Tamil Nadu Basic Service Rules. Subsequently, they resumed for duty. By impugned order dated Nil of January 1998 the Joint Director of Health Services, Uthagamandalam, Nilgiris District directed recovery of one day pay from the salary of the above said 61 employees.

(2.) ASSAILING the impugned order of recovery Mr. H. Adaikala Arockiaraj, learned counsel for the petitioner-submitted that the impugned order passed without giving any opportunity to the members to show cause, as to why one day pay should not be recovered by them is in violation of the principles of natural justice. He also submitted that having received the leave application for causal leave, the competent authority ought to have either rejected or sanctioned the leave. It is also his further contention that even the reasons for recovery is not mentioned in the impugned order. Learned counsel for the petitioner further submitted that for participating in a lawful and peaceful agitation to express their grievances, the members of the Association, should not be penalised by recovery which amounts to a penalty and in such circumstances, atleast the members of the association ought to have been put on notice.

(3.) LEARNED counsel for the respondents further submitted that above said Government instructions are in force from 1998 onwards and therefore, government servants are bound by the instructions issued by the Government from time to time. It is also the case of the learned counsel for the respondents that no leave was sanctioned by the competent authority. The basic servants simply left the leave applications and participated in the agitation. Even otherwise mass Casual Leave cannot be sanctioned, as it would be amounting to recognising their unlawful activity if agitating over the transfer of few errant cooks. As per the government instructions regulating the period of unatuthorised absence is on the principle of -no work no pay,- no show cause notice is required. He further submitted that Mass Casual leave of the employees working in Hospitals would seriously affect the health care to be rendered by the government. For the above said reasons, he submitted that the writ petitioners Association is not entitled to expouse the cause of the members of the Association who had acted against public interest and that too, to protect two of the Cooks who had engaged in theft and other undesirable activities, respectively. Hence he prayed for dismissal of the writ petition.