The Rajasthan High Court has set aside the penalty imposed on a government teacher over poor Class 10^th results in Mathematics, opining that there were no specific allegations against the petitioner that the results dropped due to commission or omission on his part.

The bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand held that there might be several reasons for which the results remained below the prescribed norms, and without finding that the results were owing to any specific action/omission on part of the petitioner, he could not be penalized for the same.

For context, a charge sheet was issued to the petitioner with the allegation that owing to his slackness and carelessness, mathematics results of class 10^th students remained below the standard prescribed by the Department of Education.

Subsequently a penalty of withholding one annual grade increment was imposed on the petitioner under Rule 17 of the Rajasthan Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1958 (the “Rules”). An appeal was filed by the petitioner against this order which was also rejected. Hence, the orders of the respondent were challenged before the Court.

After hearing the contentions, the Court firstly highlighted that the challenged orders, which were non-speaking, did not mention as to how the petitioner was responsible for the concerned result.

The Court referred to the coordinate bench decision in Dharamveer v. State of Rajasthan and Ors., in which it was held,

“…to constitute misconduct in a service, there must be commission or omission of some act on the part of the employee. Beside this, charge should be specific and must be without any ambiguity. The allegation of misconduct must be based on specific acts, deeds or omission of the employee. In absence of it, the charge shall be vague. The charge levelled against the petitioner is not at all specific, as such the same is vague.”

In this background, the Court observed that there were no allegations against the petitioner that the results dropped due to his commission or omission, and there might be several reasons for the concerned results.

Accordingly, the petition was allowed, and the challenged orders were set aside.