Civil Writ Petition No.3617 of 2011 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB & HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Date of Decision: 1.3.2011 Surjit Kaur w/o Ajmer Singh ...Petitioner versus State of Punjab and another ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE MEHINDER SINGH SULLAR Present: Mr.M.S.Bedi, Senior Advocate with Mr.Amit Bakshi, Advocate for the petitioner. M ehinder S ingh S ullar , J. (Oral) The crux of the facts, which require to be noticed for the limited purpose of deciding the sole controversy, involved in the instant writ petition and emanating from the record, is that on the eve of general Gram Panchayat elections held on 26.5.2008, petitioner Surjit Kaur was duly elected as Sarpanch of Gram Panchayat of village Nangal Lubana, Block Nadala, District Kapurthala, in view of the provisions of The Punjab Panchayati Raj Act, 1994 (hereinafter to be referred as “the Act”). In the wake of the complaint made by Harbans Singh and others, the Director, Rural Development and Panchayat Department, Punjab (respondent No.2) granted the approval to conduct the regular inquiry by the Divisional Deputy Director against the petitioner, by virtue of order dated 19.11.2009 (Annexure P1). The notice dated 24.12.2009 (Annexure P2) regarding the indicated inquiry was issued to the petitioner by the Block Development and Panchayat Officer, (for brevity “BDPO”). 2. Having completed the inquiry, the Divisional Deputy Director found the petitioner guilty of the charges alleged against her and sent his report dated 30.3.2010 (Annexure P3) to respondent No.2. After considering the report, respondent No.2 removed the petitioner from the office of Sarpanch, by way of impugned order dated 28.5.2010 (Annexure P5). The appeal (Annexure P6) filed Civil Writ Petition No.3617 of 2011 2 by the petitioner was dismissed as well, by the Financial Commissioner and Secretary, Punjab Government, Department of Rural Development and Panchayat (respondent No.1) (for short “appellate authority”), by means of impugned order dated 12.7.2010 (Annexure P7). 3. The petitioner still did not feel satisfied and preferred the instant writ petition, challenging the impugned orders (Annexures P5 and P7), invoking the provisions of Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India. 4. Having heard the learned counsel for the petitioner, having gone through the record with his valuable assistance and after bestowal of thoughts over the entire matter, to my mind, there is no merit in the instant writ petition in this context. 5. Ex facie, the arguments of learned counsel that no charge sheet was served, no opportunity of being heard was provided to the petitioner and since there was no material on record to remove her from the office of Sarpanch, so the impugned orders are illegal and arbitrary, are neither tenable nor the observations of this Court in cases Ujagar Singh v. State of Punjab and others I.L.R. (1969) 1 Punjab and Haryana 58 and Gurbaksh Singh v. The State of Punjab and others 1970 P.L.J. 500 are at all applicable to the facts of the present case, wherein, while interpreting the provisions of section 102 of the Punjab Gram Panchayat Act, it was observed that “the bare minimums of such an enquiry are (a) that clear and definite charge or charges must be given or stated to the delinquent, (b) that the material forming the basis of the charge or charges must be made known to him, and © that he must be given every opportunity to meet the charges and to defend himself. Even though under sub-section (2) of section 102 of the Act, the nature and scope of the enquiry is left entirely to the discretion of the Government, it still cannot do away with those bare minimum requirements of an enquiry and that process and recording of reasoning is essential, which brought the authority to the conclusion that the person was not fit to continue to hold the office of Civil Writ Petition No.3617 of 2011 3 Sarpanch” Possibly, no one can dispute with regard to the aforesaid observations, but the same would not come to the rescue of the petitioner in the instant controversy. 6. As is evident from the record, that having granted approval by respondent No.2 to the Divisional Deputy Director to conduct the regular inquiry under section 20(1) of the Act, by way of order (Annexure P1), notice (Annexure P2) was issued to the petitioner. In pursuance thereof, she appeared before the Inquiry Officer and has inter-alia made her statement that whatever development works were carried out in the village, those were carried out by recording a resolution with the consent of Panches and were done in accordance with technical advice of Kulwant Singh, JE. She has tried to explain her version, which was recorded by the DDPO. The Inquiry Officer recorded the statements of the parties and considered all the documents. The parties were given full opportunity to adduce their evidence in order to substantiate their respective stands. The Inquiry Officer conducted the inquiry proceedings in a lawful manner and came to a definite conclusion that the Sarpanch has misappropriated and embezzled the indicated amount by showing excess expenditure in the record. Thereafter, he sent his detailed report (Annexure P3) to respondent No.2 in this regard. 7. Not only that, taking cognizance of the report (Annexure P3) of Divisional Deputy Director, a show cause notice was served on the petitioner by respondent No.2. After hearing both the parties, respondent No.2 came to the conclusion that the charges levelled against the petitioner stand proved and he removed her from the post of Sarpanch, by means of impugned order (Annexure P5). 8. Aggrieved by the impugned order (Annexure P5), the appeal (Annexure P6) filed by the petitioner was dismissed as well, by the appellate authority, by virtue of impugned order (Annexure P7), the operative part of which is as under:- Civil Writ Petition No.3617 of 2011 4 “After hearing the arguments of both the parties it is concluded that as per regular inquiry report of the Divisional Deputy Director, Panchayat Jalandhar against the appellant, the appellant during the year 2003, embezzled an amount of Rs.91,311/- out of the grant received for the construction of toilets and an amount of Rs.51,874/- out of the grant received for digging of pond totaling to Rs.1,43,185/- by showing excess expenditure. Similarly in June, 2004 by wrongly booking an expenditure of Rs.93,902/- without AMANAT by a resolution dated 13.09.2008 withdrew a sum of Rs.46,459/- and embezzled this amount. Besides this as per resolution dated 19.12.2006, the auction money of Hadda Rori amounting to Rs.5050/- has been embezzled by not entering the same into cash book. Against the appellant FIR dated 7.11.2006 u/s 406, 420, 465, 468, 471 IPC has been registered at the Police Station Begowal and in this challan has already been presented in the court. These sections of Law came in the ambit of moral turpitude. The appellant has come within the domain of moral degradation u/s 2 (zr) of the Punjab Panchayati Raj Act, 1994. Therefore, the charges against the appellant have been fully proved. In view of this report Director Panchayat duly issued the notice to the appellant and after providing her full opportunity of hearing passed the order of dismissal. This order deserves no interference. There is no weight in the appeal. Therefore, this appeal of the appellant is dismissed.” 9. Meaning thereby, the authorities below have provided full opportunity to the petitioner to prove her innocence, which she has utterly failed in this respect. In that eventuality, it cannot possibly be saith that there was no material on record or no opportunity was provided to petitioner, as urged on her behalf. Thus, the contrary arguments of learned counsel for the petitioner “stricto sensu” deserve to be and are hereby repelled under the present set of circumstances. 10. In this manner, the Director as well as appellate authority having granted the adequate opportunity of being heard to the petitioner and having scanned the relevant material/evidence brought on record by the parties, recorded the findings of fact in the impugned orders that petitioner has embezzled the huge amount out of the grants received for construction of the development work by Civil Writ Petition No.3617 of 2011 5 showing excess expenditure. Strictly speaking, such orders containing valid reasons based on the evidence, cannot possibly be interfered with, while exercising the extraordinary writ jurisdiction of this Court, unless and until, the same are perverse and without jurisdiction. As no such patent illegality or legal infirmity has been pointed out by the learned counsel for the petitioner, therefore, the impugned orders (Annexures P5 and P7) deserve to be and are hereby maintained in the obtaining circumstances of the case. 11. No other point, worth consideration, has either been urged or pressed by the learned counsel for the petitioner. 12. In the light of aforesaid reasons, as there is no merit, therefore, the instant writ petition is dismissed as such. (Mehinder Singh Sullar) 1.3.2011 Judge AS