Important Point—Principles of natural justice and equity require assigning due reasons in support of decisions.

At the relevant point of time, petitioner was working as Administrative Officer. On 05.08.2008, a charge memo was drawn against him alleging that he was responsible for issuing temporary permits to a contract carriage in a routine and regular manner in violation of provisions under Section 88 (8) of the Motor Vehicles Act. Petitioner submitted his explanation denying the allegations. However, not satisfied with the said explanation, departmental enquiry was ordered. The enquiry officer submitted his report on 09.03.2010 holding the charges levelled against the petitioner are not proved. The disciplinary authority disagreed with the finding recorded by the enquiry officer and by recording dissenting note called for the explanation from the petitioner vide Memo dated 25.07.2010. Petitioner filed detailed explanation dated 13.09.2010 to the said memo. By the order impugned, final orders are passed imposing punishment of censure. On appeal by the petitioner, the same was confirmed. Aggrieved thereby, petitioner filed O.A.No.241 of 2013, which is now transferred to this Court.

2. The first and foremost submission made by learned counsel for the petitioner is that when the enquiry officer recorded finding of not guilty and if the disciplinary authority was not agreeing with the finding recorded by the enquiry officer, dissenting note must contain detailed reasons as to why the finding is not acceptable and then call for an explanation and thereafter, the disciplinary authority should consider the validity of the explanation submitted by the delinquent employee and pass an order dealing with those objections, assigning due reasons in support of the decision and then proceed to impose proper punishment, if the explanation is not accepted. It is therefore contended that this procedure, which is mandatory and required, is not followed in the instance case and that the disciplinary authority has not assigned reasons in support of the decision and straight away imposed the punishment and therefore the order under challenge is liable to be set aside on that ground alone.

3. Learned Government Pleader for Services II supports the decision of the disciplinary authority. According to him, the reasons assigned in support of the dissenting note sufficiently pointed out as to why the disciplinary authority was not agreeing to the conclusion arrived at by the enquiry officer and there is no ambiguity and when once the reasons are spelt out in the dissenting note that the disciplinary authority is agreeing with the earlier reasons on rejecting the objections filed by the petitioner, it cannot be said that the order under challenge is vitiated on that ground.

4. In view of the rival contentions, it is useful to extract the provision in Rule 21 (2) and (3) of the Telangana Classification Control and Appeal Rules. The Rule reads as under:

(2) The disciplinary authority shall forward or cause to be forwarded a copy of the report of the inquiry, if any, held by the disciplinary authority or where the disciplinary authority is not the inquiring authority a copy of the report of the inquiring authority together with its own tentative reasons for disagreement, if any, with the findings of inquiring authority on any article of charge to the Government servant who shall be required to submit, if he so desires, his written representation of submission to the disciplinary authority within fifteen days, irrespective of whether the report is favourable or not to the Government servant.

(3) The disciplinary authority shall consider the representation, if any, submitted by the Government servant and record its findings before proceedings further in the matter as specified in the sub-rules (4) and (5) below. (emphasis supplied)

5. A plain reading of the Rule makes it clear that it is permissible for the disciplinary authority to dissent from the findings recorded by the enquiry officer and call for the explanation of the employee. However, the disciplinary author