Managing Director, ECIL, Hyderabad v B Karunakar

Facts

• In each of the cases before the Court, departmental proceedings had been held against a government or public sector employee.
• The inquiry was conducted by an inquiry officer who was not the disciplinary authority, and who submitted a report containing his findings on the charges.
• The disciplinary authority considered that report and imposed a penalty, in some cases dismissal.
• The report was not furnished to the employee before the penalty was decided, so he had no opportunity to point out errors in the findings or to address the inquiry officer's reasoning.
• Before the 42nd Amendment, 1976, Art.311(2) had required a second opportunity to show cause against the proposed penalty, in the course of which the report was in practice supplied. That requirement had been removed.
• The employees contended that the removal of the second show cause notice did not dispense with the right to see the material on which the penalty was based.

Issue

1. Whether the inquiry officer's report must be furnished to the delinquent servant before the disciplinary authority acts on it, and what the consequence of non-supply is.

Held

• The report must be furnished. Where the inquiry officer is someone other than the disciplinary authority, his report is not merely an internal document but the very material on which the authority proceeds, and the servant's right to a reasonable opportunity under Art.311(2) includes an opportunity to respond to the report before the penalty is decided. The removal of the second show cause notice by the 42nd Amendment did not affect this, because the right to see the material is distinct from a right to be heard on the quantum of punishment. The Court declined, however, to make the consequence of non-supply automatic. Relief depends on the servant showing that he has suffered prejudice by the non-supply; if he cannot, the penalty will not be disturbed. Where prejudice is established, the ordinary course is not to quash the penalty but to remit the matter to the stage at which the report ought to have been furnished, so that the proceedings may be completed correctly, and the question of back wages and consequential benefits is to be dealt with according to the eventual outcome.

Ratio Decidendi

A hearing is meaningless if the person heard does not know the case he must answer, and after the removal of the second show cause notice the report is the only document that discloses the findings on which the penalty rests. But procedural fairness serves a purpose, and where its breach could have made no difference to the result there is nothing to remedy. Remission rather than quashing follows from the same reasoning: the appropriate relief is to restore the procedure, not to confer immunity on a servant against whom charges may be well founded.