Access to justice can't be denied even to criminal: Supreme Court
The chargesheet of misconduct was issued in 1998, seven years after he issued the cheque.
New Delhi: Access to justice is a valuable right available to every person, even to a criminal, and indeed free legal representation is provided even to a criminal. In the case of a departmental inquiry, the delinquent is at best guilty of misconduct, but that is no ground to deny access to pension (wherever applicable) or subsistence allowance (wherever applicable), the Supreme Court has held.
Giving this ruling a bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta pulled up the UCO Bank for harassing an employee, Rajendra Shankar Shukla, by denying his pension as well as subsistence allowance which prevented him from effectively participating in the disciplinary inquiry. On this ground as well, the proceedings against Shukla are vitiated.
In this case, the charge against the employee was that he issued a cheque in 1991 for Rs 3 lakh in favour of his brother when his account balance was only Rs 1,000.
The chargesheet of misconduct was issued in 1998, seven years after he issued the cheque. When he retired in 1999, he was denied salary as well as pension. A single judge and a division bench of the Chattisgarh high court granted him relief. The present appeal by UCO bank is directed against this order.
Dismissing an appeal, the bench said an employee is entitled to subsistence allowance during an inquiry pending against him or her but if that employee is starved of finances by zero payment, it would be unreasonable to expect the employee to meaningfully participate in a departmental inquiry. The first issue of concern is the enormous delay of about 7 years in issuing a chargesheet against Shukla.
The bench said there is no explanation for this unexplained delay. It appears that some internal discussions were going on within the bank but that it took the bank seven years to make up its mind is totally unreasonable and una