Non-Payment Of Subsistence Allowance Doesn't Vitiate Disciplinary Proceedings, Employee Must Show Prejudice: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court has held that non-payment of subsistence allowance to a suspended employee does not by itself invalidate the disciplinary proceedings taken against him. The employee must show a connection between the non-payment and the prejudice he claims to have suffered in defending himself.

Justice Garima Prashad held,

“The plea relating to non-payment of subsistence allowance also does not, by itself, invalidate the proceedings. Subsistence allowance is an important protection available to a suspended employee. Where its non-payment prevents an employee from participating in the inquiry or effectively presenting his defence, the resulting proceedings may be vitiated. The employee must, however, show a connection between the non-payment and the prejudice claimed.”

Petitioner, a Secretary in the Centralised Service posted in the co-operative societies within Development Block Jamo, District Sultanpur, was suspended in 1999 and dismissed on 05.09.2001. Relegated to his statutory appeal under Regulation 60 of the U.P. Primary Agricultural Co-operative Credit Societies Centralised Service Regulations, 1978, he secured a remand for fresh inquiry.

The District Administrative Committee thereafter found that he had embezzled Rs.48,652.52, had committed financial irregularities involving Rs.3,768 and had failed to hand over charge, and dismissed him on 21.02.2006. His appeal was rejected on 15.09.2006.

Before the High Court, petitioner argued that the fresh inquiry was no inquiry in the eye of law as the documents relied upon were not supplied, no effective date was fixed, no witness was examined in his presence and no cross-examination was allowed. He also pleaded that the charges were vague, subsistence allowance was not paid during suspension, and the Committee had merely approved the earlier dismissal order instead of deciding afresh after remand.

Respondents submitted that he had received both charge-sheets, filed detailed replies, was informed of the dates fixed and offered inspection of the original records. Subsistence allowance, it was submitted, could not be released because he had not furnished the prescribed declaration that he was not engaged in any other employment or business.

Relying on State of Karnataka v. N. Gangaraj, Regional Manager, UCO Bank v. Krishna Kumar Bhardwaj and S. Janaki Iyer v. Union of India, the Court held that every procedural objection does not automatically invalidate a disciplinary proceeding and that the employee must show that the alleged defect actually impaired his defence. It found the charges were not vague, and that the petitioner had made only a general complaint of withheld documents without identifying any one of them.

On subsistence allowance, the Court noted that the petitioner had not pleaded that want of funds kept him from attending any date of inquiry, producing any document or examining any witness. He had filed detailed replies, answered the show-cause notice, filed a statutory appeal and pursued proceedings before the High Court. No actual prejudice had therefore been established, held the Court.

Holding that the challenge to the findings would require an impermissible reappreciation of evidence, and that dismissal was not shockingly disproportionate to the misappropriation of funds entrusted to the employee, the Court dismissed the writ petition.