- (1.) The attempt on the part of the petitioner to have his service tenure extended has resulted in initiation of disciplinary proceeding against him for making wrong statement as regards his date of birth at the time of entering into service in Calcutta Tramways Cooperative Credit Society Limited. The authority has passed an order of stoppage of two increments. In this writ petition, under challenge is the legality of the said proceeding as also the order of the authorities, by which punishment has been imposed. The petitioner had joined the society in the year 1968 as a clerk, disclosing his age to be 20 years. Subsequently he was promoted to the post of Grade-I Assistant. In his job application, he had indicated that he had passed Higher Secondary Examination in technical science group in the year 1967, he was pursuing B.Sc course. Case of the petitioner is that during the month of December, 1996, he came to learn that his date of birth was wrongly recorded and he sought for correction of his recorded date of birth. In support of his plea, he has annexed to the writ petition as "P2", a copy of his admit card for Higher Secondary Examination. In this document, his date of birth is recorded as 5th January, 1951.
(2.) It is also his case that when he has made his plea for such correction, majority members of the managing committee of the society had accepted his request by making endorsement on his application itself, which was lying with the authorities. A copy of this application has been made Annexure P 12 to the writ petition. From this Annexure, I find that there is endorsement to the effect that "Date of birth accepted as (5-1-1950)" and there are initials of several persons, who appear to take the same view. The petitioner has identified these individual members of the managing committee of the society as T.C.Dey (Chairman), A.K. Mukherjee (Secretary), S.K. Bhattacharjee (Vice-Chairman), P.K. Sen (Director), Gurudas Chatterjee (Director), S.N. Singh (Director), N.C. Chatterjee (Director), S.P. Yadav (Director) and N.K. Singh (Director). These facts have been pleaded in paragraph 22 of the writ petition and paragraph 2 of a Supplementary Affidavit filed by the petitioner, affirmed on 19th May 2009. The petitioner claims to have acquired knowledge of the said fact from an annexure to the charge-sheet which was served on him. Otherwise, it does not appear that any official communication was made to the petitioner after the he had made his application for correction of age, until a show cause notice was issued to the petitioner on 9th February, 2004, requiring him to explain as to why the authority would not have stuck to his original date of birth of 29th April 1948 instead of 5th January 1951. His explanation did not satisfy the employer, and a chargesheet followed. Eventually the departmental proceeding led to imposition of punishment which I have already referred to.
(3.) On or about 21st April, 2004, the charge sheet was issued against the petitioner on the ground of suppression of true age at the time of his appointment, as was reflected in his Higher Secondary examination admit card. Though the factual basis of the charges against him remained the same, he was charged on two counts. The first charge was of willful suppression of material fact for the purpose of gaining employment "through gross misconduct" and the second charge was of accepting employment in an illegal manner, which as per the charge-sheet, constituted cheating. He was also placed under suspension from that date itself, but the order of suspension was subsequently lifted. The reply of the petitioner to the charge-sheet was that at the time he joined his service, he was not asked to produce any certificate in support of his age or date of birth and by mistake he had disclosed his age to be 20 years at the time of making his application. Enquiry was held thereafter in which the petitioner participated. The disciplinary authority was satisfied of the guilt of the petitioner in respect of the charges brought against him. His date of birth was restored to 19th April, 1948, as was originally disclosed by him, and the disciplinary authority ordered permanent stoppage of increment. There appears to be a minor discrepancy in specifying his date of birth as originally recorded, since as per the charge-sheet itself, original recordal of his date of birth was 29th April, 1948. But so far as the controversy involved in this proceeding is concerned, this discrepancy is not of major significance. The order of the disciplinary authority was appealed against before the appellate forum and the appellate authority modified the punishment of the petitioner enhancing the same to stoppage of two stage increments with effect from May 2005. The appellate body found no reason to interfere with finding of fact by the disciplinary authority to the effect that the petitioner had suppressed his actual age to obtain employment. It is recorded in the order of the appellate authority that on the basis of admission of the petitioner, his age on the date of entry into the service was 17 years 3 months and 24 days, whereas to be employed in the said organization, the minimum stipulated age was 18 years. There was another writ petition filed before this Court at that stage with regard to complaint of the petitioner over delay in conclusion of the appeal proceeding, but so far as the present writ petition is concerned, that proceeding is not of much relevance. The petitioner has applied for quashing the notice to show-cause as also the chargesheet and the order of punishment.;