IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No.6542 of 2010 1. Asha Mishra, W/O Late Vijoy Kumar Mishra, R/O Village- Deshawar,P.S-Sultanganj, District-Bhagalpur. Versus 1. The State Of Bihar Through The Chief Secretary, Govt. Of Bihar, Patna. 2. The Secretary, Road Construction Department, Bihar, Patna. 3. The Deputy Secretary, Road Construction Department, Govt. Of Bihar, Patna. 4. The Joint Secretary, Road Construction Department, Bihar, Patna. 3/ 15/09/2011 Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and the State. It is submitted that the husband of the petitioner retired on 31.3.2004 and has been deceased on 29.10.2006. He was on sanctioned leave from 7.7.2000 to 13.7.2000, but was wrongly proceeded with for alleged unauthorized absence along with other charges. An enquiry report of exoneration dated 26.2.2001 on all the ten charges came to be submitted. Without notice to show cause for a difference of opinion along with the grounds and materials for the same, an order of punishment dated 16.9.2002 came to be passed cancelling the departmental proceedings with retrospective effect, awarding warning and directions to use more civil language in future and restriction of one day’s salary as also that nothing beyond subsistence allowance shall be payable for the period of suspension 2 from 29.7.2000 to 5.6.2001. Learned counsel for the petitioner makes a short submission urging that if the enquiry officer submitted a report of exoneration, the disciplinary authority was not bound to accept the same. It was open for him to proceed further on a difference of opinion and take his own independent decision in the matter. It was not permissible for the respondents that if they found the report of the departmental enquiry unpalatable and had no answer to it for grounds of difference of opinion to cancel the proceedings with retrospective effect. After the enquiry had been completed and the report submitted, matters could only go ahead and not in the reverse direction. The proceedings had reached a stage of fate accomplie, like a bullet fired from a gun and which could not be put back in the barrel. Learned counsel for the State submits that the departmental proceedings came to be cancelled retrospectively in pursuance of the order of this Court in C.W.J.C. No.2549/03. The Court has gone through the order of this Court at annexure-5. The Court considers the submission of the State untenable. No such directions were given. No Court of Law can pass an order contrary to the law. 3 The illegality in proceeding ignoring an earlier enquiry report of exoneration has been noticed in (2002) 10 SCC 471 (Union of India Vs. K.D. Pandey) holding at Paragraph-5 as follows:- “5. ………….In fact from the order made by the Railway Board as well as from that part of the file where the inquiry report made earlier is discussed, it is clear that specific findings have been given in respect of each of the charges after discussing the matter and, if that is so, we fail to understand as to how there could have been a remit to the inquiry authority for further inquiry. Indeed this resulted in second inquiry and not in a further inquiry on the same set of charges and the material on record. If this process is allowed the inquiries can go on perpetually until the view of the inquiry authority is in accord with that of the disciplinary authority and it would be abuse of the process of law…….” The order of punishment dated 16.9.2002 is set aside. The petitioner is held entitled to the salary of her husband as also to the full salary for the period of suspension less what may have been paid as subsistence allowance. Let this order be complied within a maximum period of eight weeks from the date of receipt/production of a copy of this order. The application stands allowed. KC ( Navin Sinha, J.)