CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has held that disciplinary proceedings initiated against an employee nearly a year-and-half after his retirement and that too in connection with a 14-year-old vigilance case is unsustainable.
The court further observed that the initiation of proceedings is not merely tardy but altogether impermissible, as in the case, the threshold of four years prescribed in the Orissa Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1992 has long since passed. Rule 7 of the Rules prescribes that such proceedings must not pertain to events occurring more than four years prior to their institution.
The single judge bench of Justice SK Panigrahi gave the ruling recently while quashing the disciplinary proceedings initiated against Dhaneswar Nayak, who retired as a traffic inspector under State Transport Authority on October 31, 2022. According to case record, four days before his retirement the SP Vigilance, Cuttack, submitted a draft memorandum of charges against him to the transport commissioner, which was forwarded to the department on November 16, 2022.
Subsequently, disciplinary proceeding was initiated with government sanction on February 21, 2024. The allegations related to a case registered by the state vigilance on April 13, 2010, regarding unauthorised use of a seized vehicle for the illegal transportation of iron ore. On February 28, 2024, Nayak filed a petition in the high court challenging the departmental proceedings. Advocate Gyana Ranjan Sethi made submissions on Nayak’s behalf.
While disposing of the petition, Justice Panigrahi said the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against Nayak, after a lapse of 12 years and post-retirement, is manifestly unsustainable in law. “Not only had a full 12 years elapsed before the machinery of discipline was belatedly set into motion, but, in a further affront to established principles of law, this course of action was embarked upon only after the petitioner had already crossed the threshold into retirement.”
“Retirement is not a mere cessation of duty; it is the long-awaited moment when a lifetime of toil yields its rightful peace. To summon him back into the arena, to force him to bear the weight of accusations long past, is not merely a hardship, it is a palpable wrong,” Justice Panigrahi further observed.