JARNAIL SINGH LAMBA Vs. LIFE INSURANCE CORPORATION OF INDIA THROUGH ITS CHAIRMAN, YOGAKSHEMA, JEEVAN BEEMA MARG, MUMBAI 21 AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The writ petition challenges the decision taken by the Life Insurance Corporation on 26.10.2010 terminating the agency of the petitioner. His status as an agent with Code No. 3092-161 is admitted, he having been granted the agency in the year 1971. He had later become a whole time agent and his work came under cloud when he was suspected to have committed some defalcation by collecting the premia of several policy holders but not remitting the same. A charge sheet -cum-show cause notice was served on him on 18.12.1995 and after taking a reply from the petitioner on 05.01.1996, they proceeded to terminate the agency. The order involved forfeiture of commission as well. This termination effected on 29.11.1997 was the subject of challenge in the writ petition in CWP No. 14834 of 1999. The order of termination was set aside by this Court by decision dated 03.02.2010 finding that there was a fundamental flaw in terminating the agency without joining the petitioner in any form of inquiry. An opportunity was, however, given to the respondent-Corporation to hold a proper inquiry within a period of 12 weeks and take an appropriate decision. After the direction, the Inquiry Officer had been appointed and the petitioner had been served with notice of inquiry.

(2.) The inquiry related principally to two charges, which had been made in the show cause notice dated 18.12.1995; One, the petitioner made false premium postings in the Ledger sheets of 255 policy holders to derive undue financial benefits; Two, the petitioner had forged the signatures of the Staff members and unauthorizedly tampered with the official records. At the inquiry after a direction from this Court, all the Ledger pages referring to 255 policy holders had been marked as evidence and the petitioner had reportedly admitted that Ledger pages contained references to names of policy holders whom he had enlisted as customers but he had denied that those Ledger pages ever contained his signatures. The confidential reports of the policy holders had been confronted to him as containing his handwriting, of all which had been admitted.

(3.) Having regard to the fact that the petitioner denied the signatures found in the Ledger pages that contained references to remittances as having been made on particular dates, the Corporation relied on a handwriting expert's report to state that the writing of numbers and the signatures found in the Ledger pages were on comparison with the handwriting found in the confidential reports in the handwriting of the petitioner himself. It must be immediately noticed that the handwriting expert himself was not examined but the Management merely relied on the report of the handwriting expert to find that the Ledger postings contained the writings of the petitioner.