LI Network
Published on: 18 January 2023 at 19:27 IST
Upholding dismissal of a personnel, Supreme Court observed that entering the service of a disciplined force such as the CISF by suppressing criminal cases is “Gross Misconduct,”.
Supreme Court Bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M. Trivedi said that the power of judicial review exercised by a Court or a Tribunal against the orders of a departmental enquiry committee is limited to ensuring.
Court observed, “That the individual receives fair treatment and not to ensuring that the conclusion which the authority reaches is necessarily correct in the Court’s eye”.
Facts of the Case
Petitioner was appointed as a constable in the CISF on 3rd November, 2007 and served with a notice from the office of the Commandant Discipline, CISF, in April 2009, for concealing the fact, in his character certificate at the time of his joining, that he was involved in a criminal case for the offence under sections 323, 324, and 341 of the IPC, trial of which was pending before the concerned court.
Additionally it was stated in the notice that such an act of suppression was under the category of gross misconduct and indiscipline and therefore the petitioner was not eligible to be appointed in disciplined force.
The Petitioner was then subjected to disciplinary proceedings. The CISF Commandant Discipline imposed a pay cut as punishment. However, on October 6, 2009, the DIG (West Zone) took suo motu cognizance of the matter and remanded it for a new departmental investigation against the petitioner.
The petitioner was dismissed as a result of the departmental investigation. Both the Appellate Authority and the Revisional Authority upheld the dismissal from service order.
Dissatisfied with the orders issued by various CISF authorities, the petitioner filed a writ petition in 2012 before the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan in Jaipur.
Following that, the Commandant of the CISF Unit in Mumbai upheld the order for the petitioner’s dismissal from service. In 2018, the petitioner filed another writ petition.