Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 Date of decision: 11.02.2010 The State of Punjab ...appellant Versus Chuni Lal ...respondent. CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH Present: Mr. Amit Chaudhary, AAG, Punjab for the appellant. Ms. Esha Gupta, Advocate for the respondent. RANJIT SINGH J. The respondent-plaintiff was working as Accountant in the office of Divisional Soil Conservation Department, Gurdaspur. Prior to his transfer at Gurdaspur, he was serving at Faridkot. He was alleged to have committed certain acts of omission and commission while he was serving at Faridkot. The respondent- plaintiff was accordingly proceeded against and punished with the stoppage of 3 increments with cumulative effect. Balance of the pay and allowances for the period he had remained under suspension was also ordered to be forfeited. Against this order, the respondent- plaintiff filed an appeal, which was statedly dismissed on 23.9.1982. The respondent-plaintiff thereafter challenged this punishment by filing a civil suit. Number of grounds were raised to challenge the punishment which could be listed as under: Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 2 i) Charges on the basis of which the plaintiff has been punished are based on suspicion. The guilt of the plaintiff has not been established. ii) While serving charge sheet no list of witnesses was given to the plaintiff by the department. iii)The Inquiry Officer did not conduct the inquiry according to rules but he conducted the inquiry against the rules and in violation of natural justice. iv)The impugned order has been passed in routine without applying mind to the facts of the case. v) The appellate order is illegal being a non speaking order. It is only a communication served on the plaintiff intimating that his appeal has been dismissed. Copy of the order has not been served on the plaintiff. The suit of the respondent-plaintiff was decreed only on a short ground that the appellate order was illegal, void and consequently the order of punishment dated 2.4.1980, which was found to have merged with the appellate order was also set aside. The view taken by the trial Court and upheld by the First Appellate Court to term the appellate order being illegal was primarily on the ground that it was only a communication, which was served on the respondent-plaintiff. The appeal filed by the respondent-plaintiff was dismissed but no copy of the order was found available. It was also not placed on record. It is rather difficult to appreciate and accept this line of Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 3 view adopted by the trial Court and upheld and approved by the First Appellate Court. The order which was termed as the one through which the departmental appeal filed by the respondent-plaintiff was dismissed reads as under: “Shri Chuni Lal Accountant of your office may please be informed that this appeal dated 13.5.1985 has been considered and filed.” What was intimated to the respondent-plaintiff was that his appeal was considered and filed. There was no intimation to him that the appeal stood dismissed. The First Appellate Court rightly viewed this order to be a communication only. The fact also is that there was no order placed on file through which it could be said that the departmental appeal filed by the respondent-plaintiff was dismissed. In this background, it would need consideration whether this order could be termed as an illegal order. Once there was no order what was there to term any order as illegal. It would also have to be considered, whether in view of the nature of an order as noted above, it could be said that the order passed by the punishing authority would merge into the order passed by the departmental appellate authority. Since the appeal had only been considered and filed, it could not be termed as an effective order, with which the order passed by the punishing authority could have said to have been merged. It may also be worth considering that in such a situation, the proper course perhaps would have been to either direct Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 4 the authority to pass an order on appeal or to take into consideration as if there was no order on the appeal. The consequences of this accordingly could have been allowed to flow rather than terming this order to be illegal. Thus the view taken by the trial Court as well as by the appellate court does not appear to proper. Even at the time of issuance of notice of motion, the State counsel had only submitted that the matter could have been remanded back to the punishing authority to re-decide the same and pass an appropriate order on the appeal filed by the respondent- plaintiff. This is so noticed while issuing notice of motion by the Court on 23.11.1985. The order reads as under:- “ It is contended by the learned counsel that the order of punishment has been set aside on the technical ground that the order was not a speaking order. He submits that in that situation some observations should have been made that the Punishing Authority could redecide the matter and pass an appropriate order. In support of his contention he places reliance on 1985 (1) S.L.R. 684. Notice of motion for 6th January, 1986.” The appropriate course thus would have been to remit this case back to the punishing authority or the appellate authority to pass an order. At this belated stage, it may not be appropriate to adopt this course. The counsel for the parties are justified in submitting that by now the respondent-plaintiff may not be in service. He is bound to have earned his pension and any interference at this Regular Second Appeal No. 3063 of 1985 5 stage would lead to unforeseen consequences which may not be called for, especially so, when there was no stay of operation of the judgments in this case. No useful purpose would now be served, either to remit the case back to the punishing authority or to the First Appellate Court, to reconsider and to decide afresh on the remaining point, which were not taken into consideration. It may lead uncalled for further litigation. No substantial question of law otherwise is formulated. Dismissed. February 11, 2010 ( RANJIT SINGH ) rts JUDGE