Approval Order Missing From Department Records Doesn't Prove Appointment Was Procured By Fraud: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court has held that the inability of a department to trace an approval order in its own records does not establish that the approval was never granted, much less that the employee fabricated it.

It held that where the State seeks to brand an appointment fraudulent, it must identify the false representation or the fabricated document, fix responsibility for it and establish its connection with the appointment of the particular employee.

The Court was dealing with fifteen Assistant Teachers of District Mau, appointed between 2010 and 2016 in privately managed basic schools recognised by the Uttar Pradesh Board of Basic Education, which receive aid from the Social Welfare Department confined to payment of salary to the teaching staff.

Justice Manju Rani Chauhan held,

“The distinction between non-existence and non-traceability is elementary but fundamental. An approval may not presently be traceable in the record room for several reasons. That circumstance, without more, cannot automatically establish that the approval was never issued, much less that the petitioner fabricated it.”

Each appointment was made by the Committee of Management of the institution concerned after approval of the District Basic Education Officer, Mau. The papers then travelled through the District Social Welfare Officer and the Director, Social Welfare, Lucknow, to the State Government, which accorded financial approval to the appointments by separate orders passed between 2016 and 2017. Salary was paid to the petitioners thereafter.

Salary was first stopped in 2018 on an order of the District Magistrate, Mau, and an FIR was lodged against the managers of the institutions and the teachers appointed in them. On a writ petition by teachers of the district, Rajesh Tiwari and 10 Others v. State of U.P. and 9 Others, decided on 23.04.2018, the Court directed that salary be paid month to month, leaving it open to the authorities to examine the appointments in accordance with law.

A three-member Inquiry Committee constituted on 10.08.2018 submitted its report on 28.11.2018, acting on which the State Government by order dated 24.07.2019 cancelled the approvals granted to four teachers whose educational qualifications could not be verified, but left the appointments of the present petitioners untouched. The investigation into the FIR ended in a final report dated 07.06.2020, accepted by the competent court.

The matter was reopened in 2025 after questions were raised in the Legislative Assembly about appointments of Assistant Teachers made after 2014 in institutions aided by the Social Welfare Department. By order dated 29.07.2025 the Additional Chief Secretary directed fresh inquiries by the District Magistrates, and by a second order of the same date directed registration of an FIR and recovery of the salary already paid.

The District Basic Education Officer, Mau, reported by communications dated 25.04.2025, 13.06.2025, 17.06.2025 and 23.06.2025 that approval of the petitioners' appointments was not traceable in his office, and on the strength of those reports the District Social Welfare Officer by order dated 18.07.2025 directed the managements to take action against them.

A fresh FIR was registered on 05.08.2025, in which the investigating officer again submitted a final report, dated 07.04.2026. By order dated 12.12.2025 the grant-in-aid was kept in abeyance and payment of salary was stopped.

Petitioners pleaded that the verification was carried out behind their backs, without notice or hearing, and against the official record, dispatch register entries furnished under the Right to Information Act and by the Block Education Officer, and letters in which the officers who had issued the approvals confirmed them to the investigating officer. Appointments which had survived a departmental inquiry and two criminal investigations, it was pleaded, could not be declared fraudulent years later on an ex parte exercise.

The Court held that a question raised in the House may legitimately set the administrative machinery in motion, but that the executive cannot then proceed on the footing that the allegation contained in the question stands proved against everyone who answers its description.

“The legislative question constitutes the occasion for inquiry; it does not constitute the proof of culpability.”

The Court held that the 2018 inquiry and the Government order of 24.07.2019 passed upon it could not be treated as though they had never happened. The State, having separated individual cases in that exercise and cancelled the approvals of four teachers, had consciously left the petitioners alone, and was required to disclose what had since changed before reaching the opposite conclusion on the same allegations, held the Court.

It also found the respondents divided on the very necessity of approval, one limb of their case treating prior approval of the District Basic Education Officer as an indispensable statutory requirement while the earlier departmental material proceeded on a different understanding of the framework governing institutions aided by the Social Welfare Department. The State could not, it held, maintain two discordant constructions of the governing law and then adopt whichever produced an adverse result against the petitioners.

Further, the Court held that the maxim that fraud vitiates every solemn act operates only once fraud is established, and cannot stand in place of the evidence needed to establish it.

“A conclusion that an appointment is fraudulent cannot rest upon the mere incantation of the word “fraud”.”

Relying on the decision of the Supreme Court in Naresh Kumar Sinha v. State of Bihar and others, the Court noted that non-traceability of the record does not by itself render an appointment forged or fabricated, that an allegation of fraud without its foundational facts is insufficient. It observed that where the record cannot be found the proper course is to enquire into the circumstances of its disappearance rather than to visit the employee with the stigma of fraud.

“If the Department asserts that the relevant record has disappeared or cannot be traced, the first enquiry must necessarily be directed towards discovering what became of the record and who was responsible for its custody, rather than presuming that its non-availability is attributable to the employee whose appointment is under scrutiny.”

The Court rejected the submission that natural justice stands excluded where the appointment is void, holding that whether it is void is the very question requiring determination, and that an authority cannot presume the illegality and then rely on that presumption to dispense with a hearing. What began as an administrative verification had been allowed to harden into a determination affecting the service status and the livelihood of the teachers, who were entitled to see the material and to produce their own before any such conclusion was recorded, it held.

The Court further held, relying on Mohinder Singh Gill and another v. Chief Election Commissioner, New Delhi and others, that the impugned action could not be shored up by grounds supplied afterwards, and, relying on Kranti Associates (P) Ltd. and another v. Masood Ahmed Khan and others, that the reasons recorded must disclose a rational nexus between the material relied upon and the conclusion reached.

“The State must prove before it penalises; verify before it condemns; hear before it visits civil consequences; and explain before it reverses its own considered administrative position.”

Accordingly, the Court set aside the reports dated 25.04.2025, 13.06.2025, 17.06.2025 and 23.06.2025 and the consequential order dated 18.07.2025 insofar as they record adverse conclusions against the petitioners, and quashed the action founded exclusively on those reports.

The respondents were left at liberty to verify afresh, subject to safeguards: the inquiry must remain within the mandate issued pursuant to the Legislative Assembly question, must take the inquiry report dated 28.11.2018 and the Government order dated 24.07.2019 into account, must verify the original records from their respective custodians, must put the material to the petitioner and the Committee of Management concerned before any adverse finding, and must end in a reasoned order identifying, where fraud is alleged, the particular act or document said to constitute it.

Until that exercise is completed, the petitioners shall not be treated as having been removed from service on the strength of the impugned reports, and their claim to salary for the period during which they actually discharged their duties is to be reconsidered by the competent authority, uninfluenced by the findings set aside.