M.R. Calla, J. - (1.) The facts of this case depict the dismal story of the petitioner's suffering the agony of suspension ever since 1974. The petitioner who had started his career as a Ward-boy on 1st September, 1954 was promoted as Driver on 18th August, 1970. On 10th April, 1974 while he was working as Driver in the office of Dy. Chief Medical and Health Officer (Malaria), Medical and Health Department, Alwar an order was passed placing the petitioner under suspension in contemplation of the disciplinary proceedings. After placing the petitioner under suspension by order dated 10th April, 1974, the proceedings which were contemplated against him and on account of which he was placed under suspension, were put in oblivion and the same remained under hibernation. The Department suddenly woke up in November, 1988 when by a memo dated 4th November, 1988 an inquiry under Rule 16 of the CCA Rules was proposed against the petitioner and the charges which have been levelled against the petitioner now in the year 1988 are for the incident of 1974 as under:- The petitioner filed the reply to the said memo on 7th December, 1988. The petitioner has denied the charge. Even after December, 1988 no effective proceedings have taken place and the petitioner has stated while filing the writ petition on 9th January, 1990 that the last date in these proceedings for appearing before the Department was 19th June, 1989 as pointed out by Mr. Y.C. Sharma, appearing on behalf of the petitioner.
(2.) When this case came up before this Court on 6th March, 1990, a notice was ordered to be issued as to why this writ petition should not be admitted/disposed of. The service was effected on respondents and appearance was also entered and on the last date when the matter came up before this Court on 22nd August, 1990, the time was again granted to file the reply. No reply has been filed and the matter comes up before this Court for final disposal.
(3.) The sole contention raised by Mr. Y.C. Sharma before me is that the incident is as old as of 1974 for which the charge-sheet has been served in 1988 and no useful purpose would be served to continue these proceedings against the petitioner and the charge-sheet and proceedings against him must be quashed only on the ground of departmental inaction for not holding the proceedings for all these years. No explanation whats over has been furnished on behalf of the respondents as to why the proceedings were not taken from 1974 and why the charge-sheet was issued as late as in November, 1988 and why no effective proceedings have been held even thereafter. The only verbal submission made by the Addl. Govt. Advocate is that in this case a preliminary inquiry was held in the year 1987 and, therefore, the charge-sheet was issued in the year 1988. This is all the more painful that even preliminary inquiry was held in the year 1987 and yet in 1974 the petitioner was placed under suspension on the ground that an inquiry was contemplated against him. Shri Y.C. Sharma has placed reliance on the recent decision of the Supreme Court reported in AIR 1990 S.C. 1308, State of Madhya Pradesh v. Bani Singh Para 4 of this case may be appropriately reproduced as under;- "The appeal against the order dated 16-12-1987 has been filed on the ground that the Tribunal should not have quashed the proceedings merely on the ground of delay and laches and should have allowed the enquiry to go on to decide the matter on merits. We are unable to agree with this contention of the learned Counsel. The irregularities which were the subject matter of the enquiry is said to have taken place between the years 1975-77. It is not the case of the department that they were not aware of the said irregularities, if any came to know of it only in 1987. According to them even in April, 1977 there was doubt about the involvement of the officer in the said irregularities and the investigations were going on since then. If that is so, it is unreasonable to think that they would have taken more than 12 years to initiate the disciplinary proceedings as stated by the Tribunal. There is no satisfactory explanation for the inordinate delay in issuing the charge memo and we are also of the view that it will be unfair to permit the departmental enquiry to be proceeded with at this stage, in any case there are no grounds to interfere with the Tribunal's orders and accordingly we dismiss this appeal.";