S.T. Ramesh vs State Of Karnataka & Anr

The appellant herein filed original application before the Central Administrative Tribunal, Bangalore for quashing of the communication of adverse remarks under various headings as incorporated in the letter from the Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka, dated 9.12.1997. The Tribunal, by its order, dismissed the Original application with costs of Rs.3000/- payable to the second respondent, namely, Sri C. Dinakar, IPS. Aggrieved against the same, the appellant filed writ petition before the High Court which was also dismissed by the High Court. The appellant questioned the correctness of the order passed by the Tribunal and of the High Court in this appeal.

As already noticed, all the adverse remarks were recorded by the reporting authority, Late Mr. Vijay Sasanur. However, the whole basis of attack of the impugned adverse remarks alleging the ill-will and mala fide was made by the appellant only against the second respondent. The grounds taken in the original application and the grounds mentioned in the representation of the appellant are all based on the misconceived perception on the part of the appellant that the second respondent alone is the author of the adverse remarks and the second respondent is biased against the appellant and, therefore, he deliberately authored those remarks against the appellant as a vindictive measure. We have also carefully analysed as to whether any other ground was made to assail the impugned adverse remarks apart from the remarks made against the appellant by the second respondent. We have not found any other ground except the personal attack made against the second respondent.

In our view, the High Court was prejudiced by the intemperate outburst of the appellant in his representation, which led to the dismissal of the writ petition. On account of such prejudice, the High Court chose to ignore the consistently good record of the appellant and based its judgment on the basis of the language used by the appellant in his representation. Furthermore, the High Court also failed to appreciate that remarks such as "anything but smiling", "cannot vibe with his seniors" and "his decision making was governed by his paradigm" are not remarks which are adverse or could have been used to justify the average rating in the appellant's A.C.R. In order to satisfy ourselves we had called for the entire service record of the appellant and upon perusal of the same, we find that the remarks of the reporting officer for the period in question were contrary to his consistent performance. The observation of the respondent No.2 that the appellant was an arrogant officer is followed by his remark that his knowledge and work is good. Such an observation, in our judgment, cannot be the basis of an overall rating of average. The Tribunal also appears to have been prejudiced by the intemperate language used by the appellant against the second respondent. The Tribunal while holding that such language was totally unacceptable also imposed cost of Rs.3,000/- on the appellant to be paid to the second respondent. It is not in dispute that the said cost has been paid by the appellant to the second respondent. However, for the same reasons as those indicated above, we are of the view that the Tribunal also committed an error in overlooking the otherwise consistently good track record of the appellant. For the reasons aforesaid, we allow the civil appeal and set aside the order passed by the Tribunal and the High Court in Writ Petition No.3310/2005. The authorities are directed not to treat the appellant's performance during the period in question as average. The appellant should also desist from using intemperate and abusive language in future while discharging his official functions.

There will be no order as to costs.