Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Feb 17: High Court has upheld the down-grading of the company by the Defence Ministry for forging of invoice and set aside the writ court judgment whereby downgrading was quashed.
The contactor company- M/s Tarmat Ltd was awarded a contract work of resurfacing of runway at Air Force Station, Awantipora, Kashmir for an amount of Rs. 87,99,24,814.26 and during execution of the contract, the company forged an invoice for an amount of Rs. 51,27,948 instead of actual amount of Rs. 23,74,750 issued by the Ultra Tech Cement Limited.
On the basis of invoice, an inflated amount of Rs. 51,27,948 was released in favour of the company by the Union of India through Secretary to Govt Ministry of Defence, Govt of India and others as such, the company received Rs. 26.99 lakhs in excess.
When the tampered invoice was forwarded by the UoI and others to Ultra Tech Cement Limited for its verification, it was conveyed that the invoice has been forged.
The Engineer-in-Chief Military Engineering Service (MES), Ministry of Defence (Army), New Delhi issued a show cause notice to the company to submit justification and reply for the alleged act of forgery.
The company admitted its guilt but left the quantum of reasonable punishment to the discretion of the Engineer in Chief. The Defence Ministry downgraded the company from ‘SS’ class to ‘S’ class and suspended the business dealing with it for a period of two years.
The Division Bench of Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal said the writ court set aside the downgrading of the company primarily because no specific show-cause notice for ‘downgrading’ had been issued.
“Given that a show-cause notice for ‘removal’ was duly served, the award of a lesser punishment of downgrading falls within the authority’s jurisdiction. Consequently, the Writ Court’s decision vide judgment dated 27.03.2018 to quash the downgrade cannot be sustained” the DB said.
“We allow this appeal and set aside the order dated 27.03.2018 passed by the Writ Court…,” the court concluded.
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