Bombay High Court
Sudhir Vishnu Panvalkar
Versus
Bank of India
Decided On:

Headnote:Sections 83 and 88-5erVIce-Termination of-Appellant Involved in misappropriating of Societys funds-Proceeding Initiated under Section 88 of the Act-Documents filed by bank not disputed by appellant-High Court rightly constrained the termination order.-It needs to be stated that the termination order was a simpliciter termination. However, the appellant who insisted for the reasons for his termination and. therefore, the Bank was constrained to inform the appellant that the termination was resorted to because of loss of confidence. It also needs to be emphasised that the appellant was Grade III Officer in the Bank who was required to deal with the customers and, therefore, if the Bank thought it fit to terminate the services of the appellant on the ground of loss of confidence such an action could not be said to be unwise or mala fide action.

       They only ground that survives for the Court consideration is as to whether the Bank was justified in terminating the services of the appellant on the ground of loss of confidence and in the facts and circumstances of the case, whether any such inquiry was necessitated. From the material placed on record before Court, it is quite clear that the appellant was involved in misappropriation of Societys funds. The proceedings initiated under Section 88 of the Act went upto the Maharashtra Cooperative Tribunal and after contest by the parties, the tribunal held the appellant guilty of certain charges involving moral turpitude relating to misappropriation of Societys funds. Mr. Singhvi. however, urged that some of these documents were not the subject matter of proceedings before the High Court and, therefore, they cannot be relied upon by the Bank in this appeal. He also urged that these documents/papers are from the proceedings before the Registrar and that they have no bearing upon the issue involved in this case. He also urged that the Bank had not produced the entire correspondence before this Court for its appreciation and proper decision. Ordinarily, this plea could have been sustained but no stat able reasons could be given on behalf of the appellant nor the correctness thereof could be challenged. All these documents were filed by the Bank alongwith its counter affidavit of which the copy and the documents were furnished to the appellant long time back. Although, the rejoinder was filed by the appellant he could not dispute the correctness of all these documents. It is in these circumstances, we are of the view that these documents could be relied upon by the Bank to justify the order of termination on the ground of loss of confidence. On perusal of the material produced before opinion of the Court that the order of termination passed by the Bank does not suffer from any vice and the Division Bench of the High Court was right in upholding the termination order.

       For Citation 1997 CTJ 897 (SC)