WP(C) 2209/2011 BEFORE HON’BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE MR. MADAN B. LOKUR HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE A.C.UPADHYAY This writ petition is directed against an order dated 1.9.2010 passed by the Cen tral Administrative Tribunal, Guwahati Bench, Guwahati in OA No.46/2009. A charge sheet was framed against the respondent on the allegation that he deman ded and accepted illegal gratification of ‘100/- from a passenger for providing him a sleeper class berth in a train. The Enquiry Officer looked into the allegation made against the respondent, but found no substance in the charges. Accordingly, a report was drawn up in favour of the respondent. When the matter was placed before the disciplinary authority, he noted by an obs ervation made on 16.11.2005 that he did not agree with the findings of the Enqui ry Officer and that according to him the Enquiry Officer was biased. Therefore, the disciplinary authority rejected the report of the Enquiry Officer and impose d punishment of reduction to lower time scale of pay for two years with cumulati ve effect. The respondent preferred an appeal against the order of disciplinary authority, but that was rejected on 15.5.2006. A revision petition was also rejected by the appropriate authority on 28.9.2007. In the circumstances, the respondent preferred OA No.46/2009 before the Tribunal for quashing the award of punishment and the disciplinary proceedings against h im. The Tribunal noted that the petitioner/Department had made two errors in the ent ire proceedings. The first was that a copy of the enquiry report was not supplied to the responde nt. Insofar as this is concerned, it is curable defect as has been held by the S upreme Court in Managing Director, ECIL, Hyderabad etc. vs. B. Karunakar, AIR 19 94 SC 1074. The more substantive finding of the Tribunal is that the disciplinary authority did not follow any principle of natural justice and straightway even without iss uing a notice to the petitioner, concluded that the report of the Enquiry Office r deserves to be rejected and that the Enquiry Officer was biased in favour of t he respondent. To make matters worse, the disciplinary authority imposed a punishment on the re spondent without giving him any opportunity of representing against the rejectio n of the enquiry report, which, incidentally was not even supplied to him. In our opinion, the Tribunal rightly came to the conclusion that there was a ser ious violation of the principles of natural justice. It is now well settled that before rejecting the report of the Enquiry Officer, the disciplinary authority must record some tentative reasons and furnish them t o the delinquent officer so that he can support the enquiry report and oppose th e show cause notice. Admittedly, this opportunity was not granted to the respond ent. We do no find any error in the view taken by the Tribunal that the disciplinary proceedings drawn against the respondent were vitiated and that therefore the pu nishment awarded to the respondent deserved to be set aside. There is no merit in this writ petition and it is accordingly dismissed with cos ts of ‘ 1000/- payable to the respondent. Learned counsel for the petitioner says that the matter may be remitted to the d isciplinary authority. We are not inclined to grant such a prayer in the case of a minor punishment and more particularly since such a prayer was not made befor e the Tribunal. Even otherwise the request is highly belated.