RAJESH KAIME Vs. COAL INDIA LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By way of filing this writ petition, the petitioner has sought for the following reliefs:-

(2.) It is the case of the petitioner that he was working in the post of Assistant Manager (Personnel). On the basis of com-plaint made by Vijay Kumar Paswan on 22/8/2017 to the office of S.P.(CBI), Ranchi with regard to demand of illegal gratification by the petitioner, R.C. Case No. 06A/2017-R was registered in the year 2017. However, the petitioner was acquitted from the charges for offence u/s 7 and 13(2) read with Sec. 13(1)(d) of the Pre-vention of Corruption Act 1988 by judgment dtd. 1/4/2019. That the Chairman-cum-Managing Director, CCL initiated the de-partmental proceeding after the institution of FIR and issued the memorandum containing the imputation of misconduct along with Article of Charges on 28/12/2017. The Enquiry Officer on comple-tion of enquiry in the departmental proceeding, submitted the re-port dtd. 1/3/2019 holding the petitioner guilty of the charges. Thereafter, the petitioner was given 15 days to submit his repre-sentation against the enquiry report by Chairman-cum-Managing Director, CCL vide letter no. 132 dtd. 15/4/2019. The petitioner made his representation after acquittal from the charges by the Spl. Judge CBI, Ranchi, however, Respondent no 3 again vide let-ter no 644 dtd. 1/6/2019 directed to submit a representation. It is submitted that vide letter no 3851-60 dtd. 24/2/2020, the respondent no. 1 passed its final order of dismissal of the peti-tioner from his service. The petitioner had preferred an appeal against the order of dismissal, before the Board of Directors, Coal India Limited, however, even after a lapse of 5 months, the peti-tioner did not receive any notice for date of hearing nor any com-munication was made to him.

(3.) Learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the enquiry officer had not examined S.C. Jha and Vijay Kumar Paswan even when they were named as chargesheet witnesses. There were no oral and documentary evidences produced. The only doc-ument evidence relied upon by the management is the complaint dtd. 22/8/2017 made by Vijay Kumar Paswan. There were no witness produced by the management to show in any manner that at any point of time, there were any dues lying towards LCS and gratuity to be paid nor any evidence had been proved that any file in this regard towards the payment of dues to the family of the deceased employee Ajay Kumar was pending before the petitioner. Even the principle of preponderance of probability in departmental proceeding cannot be applied as there was no evidence against the petitioner nor there any documentary evidence to show the liability of the petitioner for making payment of LCS and gratuity amount to the family of the deceased. Furthermore, the four wit-nesses cannot be relied upon as they were not the eye witnesses and also the evidences produced by them does not prove the charges against the petitioner.