ARJUN LAL Vs. CHIRMAN KISAN GRAMIN BANK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioner who, at the relevant time was in the service of the respondent Bank in its Rajpura Branch, Budaun and was fastened with the charge of defalcating public money has preferred this petition for the relief of quashing the charge-sheet, enquiry report and show cause notice, annexed as Annexures-2, Annexure-5 and Annexure-5A to the writ petition.

(2.) Sri S.K. Verma, learned senior Advocate assisted by Sri Siddharth Verma appearing for the petitioner, has urged that the allegations made in the First Information Report and evidence of the criminal case constitute the basis for Departmental proceedings also and canvassed that pending criminal proceeding, the authorities should stay their hands off the departmental proceedings. In the alternative, it was urged that if the Court is not pleased to stay departmental proceedings, the petitioner be granted the indulgence of filing a detailed reply to the show cause notice and also be afforded opportunity of personal hearing before the final orders are passed in Departmental proceedings for the reason that the detailed reply could not be filed by the petitioner so far and he only agitated the question about maintainability of Departmental proceeding in the form of short reply filed by him.

(3.) Sri K.L. Grover, learned senior advocate appearing for opposite parties contended that petitioner has, with a purpose to a design, not filed charge-sheet of the criminal case. He further contended that the petitioner was suspended from service on 28/10/1994 and ever since then subsistence allowance is being paid to him and that since criminal proceedings were protracting, hence . Departmental proceedings were rightly commenced. It is further submitted that petitioner was given full opportunity to participate in the enquiry stating that a show cause notice as well as a copy of the enquiry report was given to the petitioner in accordance with Rules. It is further submitted that the petitioner also filed reply and final orders will be passed in accordance with Rules after reckoning with the same. There is no justification for staying the Departmental proceeding.