IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA CWJC No.3204 of 2007 MRINAL KUMAR, son of Lallan Prasad, resident of village – Chandhari, Post Chandhari, P S – Islampur, District – Nalanda Versus 1. THE STATE OF BIHAR through the Finance Commissioner, Department of Finance, Bihar, Patna. 2. The Commissioner and Secretary, Department of Finance (Commercial Taxes), Bihar, Patna. 3. Assistant Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, Bihar, Patna. 4. Under Secretary, Department of Finance (Commercial Taxes), Bihar, Patna. ----------- For the petitioner : Mr. Ganesh Prasad Singh, Sr. Advocate & Mr. Manish Kumar. For the State : Mr. Girijesh Kumar, JC to AAG-III. ----------- 02. 30.06.2010 All aspects of the dispute raised in the present writ application are not required to be recorded or gone into in view of the limited submissions which have been made on behalf of the petitioner in the present case. Some basic fact, however, is that the petitioner was posted as a Treasury Officer at Khagaria in the year 2003. Due to his omissions and commissions certain bills at the end of financial year were not passed, which led to lapsing of the funds. This act of petitioner was considered serious enough to initiate a proceeding against him, which resulted into an order of punishment dated 31.7.2006 contained in Annexure- 21. Petitioner has decided to challenge the order of punishment seeking quashing of impugned order, i.e. annexure-21. Two kinds of punishments have been awarded on the petitioner. One that he was released from suspension but he would not be paid his salary or any other emoluments for the period of suspension except the subsistence allowance paid to him. 2 The other order of punishment is ‘censor’ which was to be entered into his service book for 2005-06. So far as the second punishment is concerned, the hurt of the petitioner has been assuaged by the passage of time. The censor entered into the service book has lost its meaning after lapse of three years. Therefore, he is not concerned about the said punishment order at this stage. With regard to the first punishment his submission is that the decision not to pay the salary and other emoluments for the period of suspension without following the procedure prescribed under Rule 97 of the Bihar Service Code is per say illegal and requires intervention of this Court. Submission on this score has been made by the learned senior counsel for the petitioner on the basis of two Division Benches decisions which have been rendered in the case of Shri Mahabir Prasad v. The State of Bihar and others, 1988 PLJR 82 and Pramod Kumar v. The Champaran Kshetriya Gramin Bank and others, 2003(4) PLJR 68. The proposition of law laid down by the two Division Benches still occupies the field and in absence of any clear evidence that the procedure laid down under Rule 97 of the Bihar Service Code was followed, this punishment is quashed but the matter is remitted back to the respondents that they shall take decision on this aspect of the matter in light of the two Division Benches decisions and by following the procedure laid down in 3 Rule 97 of the Bihar Service Code. The writ application stands allowed to the extent indicated above. rkp ( Ajay Kumar Tripathi, J )