- (1.) THE petitioner having served the respondent Education Department as Teacher, since her initial appointment on 17/10/1965, has passed through the chain of litigation with the respondent Department and the present writ petition is restricted to the consequential relief as a fruit of her success in the litigation & for which the review DPC held by the respondent Department has already recommended her case for promotion to the post of Principal, thereafter, to the post of District Education Officer and further to the post of Deputy Director, but which has not yielded anything so far.
(2.) THE brief review of the legal battle and orders passed by this Court are referred hereunder. For the charge sheets issued under Rule 16 of the Rajasthan Civil Services (Classification, Control & Appeal) Rules, 1958 served on the petitioner in the year 1995, the petitioner was held guilty and punished in the year 2002, after her retirement in the year 1999. The said punishment orders were challenged by the petitioner by way of SBCWP No.1120/2005 ­ Smt. Manorama Asopa vs. State & ors. & SBCWP No.1310/2005 ­ Smt. Manorama Asopa vs. State & ors. The said writ petitions came to be allowed by this Court on 23/4/2009 in the following terms: - "9. A bare perusal of the impugned order shows that the said order of withholding of 5% of pension has been passed by the Disciplinary Authority, namely, the Director of Education though with the approval of the Governor and RPSC, but no notice prior to imposition of such penalty was given to the petitioner. A perusal of Annex.24 dated 22.11.2002 a letter written by the Dy. Secretary of the Government of Rajasthan to the Director shows that the record was called by the said Dy. Secretary for approval of the punishment by the RPSC and in pursuance of the same along with letter dtd.29.5.2003, the Director sent back the said record along with the stipulation of proposed punishment on the petitioner of withholding of 5% of the pension permanently. Copy of both these letters Annex.24 dtd.22.11.2002 and 29.5.2003 were not endorsed to the petitioner and therefore, the petitioner was never put to notice of that punishment of withholding of pension to the extent of 5% proposed against her to be approved by the RPSC and the Governor. The petitioner for the first time came to know of this punishment with the approval of the Governor only by the impugned order dtd.6.10.2004. In view of this admitted position that no notice of proposed penalty of withholding of pension of 5% was given to the petitioner prior to passing of the impugned order, this Court is of the clear opinion that the impugned order of penalty deserves to be quashed on this ground alone. Therefore, without going into the merits of the charges and alleged breach of principles of natural justice during the course of enquiry, this Court is of the view that the impugned orders cannot be sustained on the ground of not giving notice of proposed punishment to the petitioner prior to passing of the impugned orders. 10. Though the learned counsel for the petitioner took this Court through the nature of charges and the defence taken by the petitioner to establish that the charges were only relating to supervisory negligence and no financial loss was caused to the State Government and for this reason also, the impugned punishment of withholding of pension could not be passed against the petitioner, this Court considers it not necessary to go into the said aspects. 11. This Court in the case of J.N. Purohit (supra) as quoted above in para 10 has clearly laid down that in absence of such notice the impugned punishment order cannot be sustained while considering Rule 170 of the RSR which is admittedly parimateria with Rule 7 of the Rules of 1996. Since punishment in question was imposed after retirement of the petitioner from service in the year 1999, obviously Rule 7 would apply in the present case. Since mandatory requirement of giving prior notice of proposed punishment has not been complied with in the present case, this writ petition deserves to be allowed. 12. Consequently this writ petition is allowed and the impugned punishment order dtd.6.10.2004 in SBCWP No.1120/2005 and impugned order dtd.6.10.2004 (Annex.17 in SBCWP No.1310/2005) are quashed and set aside and the respondents are directed to payamount of the pension withheld under the impugned orders to the petitioner with interest @9% per annum within a period of three months from today. No costs.
(3.) THE said order of the Single Bench was upheld by the Division Bench with the dismissal of DBC Special Appeal (W) No. 02341/2010 ­ State of Rajasthan and ors. vs. Smt. Manorama Asopa, as time barred.;