Judgment

RANGANATHAN, J- In the Special Leave Petitions, we grant leave and proceed to dispose of all these appeals by a common order. It may be noted that, except in C.A. 3044/89, the Union of India is the appellant.

The short common question arising in this large batch of appeals is: who is the authority competent to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the Government servants who are the parties here (hereinafter referred to, for convenience, as the respondents)? There are two sets of appeals before us, one arising out of proceedings in the Ministry of Defence, and the other in the Ministry of Railways. The rules governing the former are the Central Civil Services (Classification, Control & Appeal) Rules (hereinafter referred to as "the Civil Services rules") and those governing the latter are the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules (hereinafter referred to as the Railway rules).

S/Shri G.B. Pai, Anil Dev Singh, P.A. Choudhary, Madhava Reddy, B. Kanta Rao, A. Subba Rao, A.T.M. Sampath, R.D. Upadhyay and others have argued the matters at length and in great detail and we proceed to dispose of these appeals after considering all the aspects urged before us.

We shall ta