Case: Mohammad Abdul Salam Khan Vs. Sarfaraz Ahmad Khan &amp; Others

3. The appellant and the 1st respondent were two of the three candidates for Chairmanship of the Town Area of Bugrasi. The 1st respondent secured the highest number of votes and was declared elected by the Returning Officer. Thereupon the appellant moved the statutory tribunal by an election petition which was allowed on the score of disqualification for being chosen as Chairman by virtue of Section 6-K of the U. P. Town Areas Act (Act II of 1914). The disqualification stemmed from dismissal of the 1st respondent on September 26, 1963 from the Delhi Police Force. When the Election Tribunal set aside the 1st respondents election and declared the appellant as the Chairman, the unseated candidate invoked the writ jurisdiction of the High Court. The learned Single Judge who heard the petition affirmed the order of the Tribunal substantially but in relation to the relief directed against the declaration of the appellant as Chairman, the order was vacated. That question was left to be decided afresh in the light of certain observations of the learned Judge. Dissatisfied by the result, both the appellant and the 1st respondent filed Writ Appeals before a Division Bench of the High Court which ended in the allowance of the claim of the 1st respondent to be Chairman and consequential dismissal of the appeal of the other. The aggrieved appellant has, therefore, come up to this Court by special leave for relief based on the construction of two slightly ambiguous rules having some impact on this village election.

Court's reasoning:
6. We are not impressed with this dualism. If dismissals impliciter carries with this in it the ban on re-employment as a necessary jural incident, then both the elements are present implicitly in the-order. It is not as if the interdict against re-employment should be separately stated in the rule or order if by force of law an effective bar in that behalf can be read into the order cashiering the constable. So we are thrown back on the order itself which, admittedly, is silent on prohibition ofargument which weighed with the High Court is that Section 6-K speaks of two components (a) dismissal; (b) and being debarred from re-employment. The second ingredient is not present in the terminal order against the constable and so the formula for disqualification is not fulfilled.It is clear that Section 7 speaks of dismissal as a single category of punishment, not as two twigs from the same branch i. e., dismissal without and with embargo on reentry into State. It may, however, be noticed that there is no specific reference to removal from service, a recognised form of punishment sanctified by the Constitution Acts, including Articlesubmission made with some attractiveness by Shri Goyal receives verbal support from the text of the rule. It speaks of a police officer being dismissed in consequence of corrupt practice in which case there is a mandate to the State Government that its cause shall be published in the Police Gazette In other cases of dismissal, the provision for publication in the Police Gazette isthe present case there is no indication of any such publication and so the dismissal does not carry with it the forbidding factor regarding re-employment Read with S. 6-K, which refers to dismissal together with debarment from re-employment, the conclusion is sought to be drawn that the 1st respondents case does not attract the disqualification in Section 6-K.11. We do not agree. The reasons are two-fold. As earlier explained, every dismissal has a double consequence understood in its contextual connotation. It removes the man from his office and superadds debarment from re-employment. Such being its meaning in the Indian Constitution in the relevant rules which have been in force in the country over the decades and indeed has become part of our officialese, we have to understand the dismissal as punishment imposed upon the constable in this case as one which embodies the latent penalty of disability from being re-employed.12. Secondly, even Rule 16 (2) (iii) carefully scanned, refuses to yield the helpful inference drawn from it by counsel for the 1st respondent. That rule does not state in other cases of dismissal the bar against re-employment operates only where there is publication in the Police Gazette to that effect. Dismissal, as such, carries with it this additional penalty in both classes of cases but in the first category covered by the rub publication is a duty cast upon the authority while in the second type of cases the authority is left with the option to publish or not to publish. If the dismissing authority desires to ensure itself that unwittingly some other department may not employ the dismissed official, he may, by way of abundant caution, resort to publication of the punishment in the Police Gazette. The language is clear that to ensure that the officer dismissed shall not be re-employed the concerned authority shall send for publication the relevant particulars. Not that without such publication a right to reemployment inheres in the dismissed official, but that to make sure that any unknowing slip may not be committed by another department, the dismissing officer may take care to forward the particulars of punishment for proper publication. It is enabling so far as the dismissing authority is concerned and is legally unnecessary to spell the two-in-one punishment of dismissal.13. In this view of the matter, there is no escape from the conclusion that the 1st respondent was punished under the former part of Rule 16 (2) (iii) and incurred the-extreme wrath of the law including disbarment from re-employment. Logically therefore he suffered disqualification under Section 6-K of the Act and the Tribunal, in removing him from Chairmanship, acted legally.