B PANDA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution by one Mr. B. Panda, who at the relevant time was Manager of Burra Dhemo Colliery situate in the Burdwan District of West Bengal. An unfortunate accident occurred at the mines wherein about 25 persons were trapped and they ultimately died. There were a number of enquiries with regard to that accident in consequence of which the Central Government constituted a Court of inquiry to go into the question whether the petitioner is a fit person to continue to hold the Colliery Manager certificate issued to him under the previous Regulations which have now been replaced by the Coal Mines Regulations, 1957 hereinafter referred to as the Regulations--published in the extraordinary Gazette of India dated 24th October, 1957. Part II --Sect. 3, page 2569. The charges which were to be enquired into by the Court of Inquiry are to be found in paragraph 2 of annexure 'A' and are in these terms:-

(2.) A number of contentions have been raised in the petition but the learned counsel for the petitioner has confined his arguments to the following contentions :1. That there was no proper enquiry held by the Court of Inquiry inasmuch as the prosecution witnesses were not examined from start to finish at the inquiry, but their previous statements were taken as examination-in-chief. Therefore, according to the learned counsel there has been a prejudice to the petitioner inasmuch as if the witnesses had been examined afresh he would have been in a position to point out contradictions in their testimony, if any, vis-a vis their previous statements and that would have gone a long way in showing whether the witnesses were witnesses of truth or not and that would have influenced the decision of the Court of Inquiry; 2. that the statement made by Mr. Panda before the Sarkar commission was used by the Court of Inquiry without that statement being either put to Mr. Panda or being brought on the record of the case as evidence;

(3.) that the use of the previous statement of Mr. Panda has been made by the Court of Inquiry under compulsion and, therefore, the report which is based thereon is bad in law because that statement could not be made use of in view of Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India.