NEW DELHI: Dealing with a plea of a JNU staffer, whose deputation to Mozambique was delayed by the university citing an internal inquiry is pending against him, the Delhi High Court on Friday said the case is a ‘classic and textbook example’ of prejudice to an employee.
Umesh Babu, the petitioner and staffer at Jawaharlal Nehru University, had applied for a short-term deputation of 11 months as a teacher of Indian Culture at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Mozambique. He had successfully cleared an interview for the deputation.
However, a request for relieving him to join the position in Mozambique was rejected, in view of a pending inquiry into fraud related to leave-travel concession (LTC). In the HC order, Justice Jyoti Singh noted that the charges levelled by an internal inquiry officer of the university against the petitioner have not been proved and hence absolved him in the pending inquiry.
The court said it would be unfair and unjust to the petitioner if he is not permitted to proceed with the deputation, considering the fact that the competent authority empowered to take a decision on the inquiry report, has neither accepted it nor disagreed with it.
The court was of the view that “facts of the case require that a balance must be struck between the competing interests of the litigating parties. It needs no emphasis that the petitioner is only proceeding to join the post of a teacher on a short-term deputation and is not permanently severing his relationships with the respondent and/or proceeding to take up any private job and there is nothing that stops the authority concerned from taking a decision on the inquiry report, one way or the other and consequences in the law shall follow. However, if the petitioner is not relieved to proceed for the deputation, his chance for any future deputation with ICCR will be lost forever and even if he is finally exonerated, the harm done will be irretrievable.”