Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, June 26: High Court has quashed the compulsory retirement of Imtiyaz Ahmad Lara, Incharge Assistant Executive Engineer PMGSY Uri with the direction to the State to reinstate the petitioner and grant him all the consequential benefits within a period of one month from the date the certified copy of this order is served on them by the petitioner.
After hearing Senior Advocate ZA Shah for the petitioner, Justice M K Hanjura observed, “looking at the instant case from the perspective, an important facet which cannot be lost sight of is that the committee has given a complete go by to the Regulation 226(2) of the CSR read with the instructions in considering his compulsory retirement”.
“These lay great emphasis and spell out the need and demand to consider the entire service record of the public servant available in the shape of APRs, service book, personal file- giving the details of the complaints received against him from time to time and so on and so forth”, High Court said, adding “while considering the desirability of the retention or otherwise of a public servant, whose conduct has come under a cloud, the criminal case(s) registered against him can be considered on the parapet and the bulwark of the chain of the documents/ service particulars. But to say that the FIR(s) can form the sole basis to retire a public servant compulsorily is neither in tune nor in line with the scheme and mandate of Article 226(2) of the CSR read with the guidelines and the judicial pronouncements holding the ground”.
Justice Hanjura further observed, “the contention of the respondents is that there was no material in the shape of ‘Character Roll Entries’ available before them and, if these were not available, the State could not have concluded that the conduct of the petitioner was unbecoming of a public servant, or that he was a man of doubtful integrity, or that he was a fit person to be retired compulsorily from service”.
“The order of the compulsory retirement of the petitioner, in these circumstances, is punitive having been passed for the collateral purpose of his immediate removal rather than in public interest”, the High Court said while quashing the Government Order No. 1276-GAD of 2016 dated 21st of November, 2016.
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