The Supreme Court has held that the existence of a regulation framed under a statute cannot curtail or fetter legislative power to amend the parent enactment in a manner that overrides the regulation.

A Bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice K.V. Viswanathan made the observation while upholding the power of the Commissioner of the erstwhile North Delhi Municipal Corporation to dismiss a Group-A officer from service following his conviction in a corruption case.

This case arises from the Delhi High Court's 2019 order, wherein it had upheld the Appellant's dismissal from service. The appellant, Rajesh Sharma, served as an executive engineer with the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. He was convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Commissioner dismissed him from service in 2011.

Challenging his dismissal, he argued that he belonged to Group A officer and as per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Service (Control and Appeal) Regulations, 1959, the competent authority to impose a major penalty, which included dismissal, was the Corporation and not the Commissioner.

He approached the Central Administrative Tribunal, which set aside his dismissal and ordered the disciplinary authority to pass a fresh penalty order. This was challenged by the respondents before the Delhi High Court, which held that the Commissioner, as the disciplinary authority, was right to dismiss the respondent.

The interpretative conundrum was that the 1957 Act didn't specify the disciplinary authority, and therefore, the 1959 Regulation was enacted, which specified the Corporation as the authority. In 1993, the parent legislation was amended, and it was specified that the disciplinary authority would be the Commissioner. But it also added a phrase to Section 59(d) which said 'subject to any Regulation that may be made in this behalf'.

When the matter was challenged in the Supreme Court, a bench comprising Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Manoj Misra referred to Stroud's Judicial Dictionary on 'may be' and said that it referred to the future Regulations that are made after the 1993 amendment and not the existing 1959 Regulations. It said that the legislative intention was to replace the disciplinary authority with the Commissioner.

"Use of the words 'may be' before 'made' signifies the legislative intent of not making clause (d) of Section 59 subject to the existing regulations. There is another reason to support the above conclusion, which is, if we interpret clause (d) as suggested by the learned counsel for the appellant, it will render the words 'may be made' redundant or superfluous. Any interpretation which would render some of the words in a statutory provision nugatory and/or superfluous must be eschewed."

The Court said that in any case, Regulations are a piece of subordinate legislation framed under the parent legislation. It can't fetter the legislative power to amend the Act in a way that it overrides the Regulations. It clarified that if the intention of the legislature was not to override the existing 1959 Regulations, they might not have appointed the Commissioner as the disciplinary authority or might not have used the phrase 'any Regulation that may be made'.

"Regulations are piece of subordinate legislation. What can be achieved by a subordinate legislation under the Act can always be achieved by an amendment of the Act by the competent legislature. Moreover, existence of a Regulation framed under the Act cannot fetter the legislative power to amend the Act in a way that it overrides the Regulation."

Concluding, the Court upheld the High Court's order: "In view of the analysis above, we hold that consequent to the substitution of clause (d) of Section 59by Act 67 of 1993, with effect from 01.10.1993, notwithstanding the existing 1959 Regulations, it is the Commissioner who is the disciplinary authority of the appellant and as such competent to impose punishment of dismissal from service."

Case Details: RAJESH SHARMA v NORTH DELHI MUNICIPAL CORPORATION AND ANR|CIVIL APPEAL/ 2026 (SLP (C) No.28644 of 2019)

Citation : 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 640

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