The disciplinary authority must adhere to the principles of natural justice by giving the employee an opportunity to respond before disagreeing with the inquiry officer's findings and issuing a notice for punishment.

I.K. Jain, J.

1. This petition arises against the order of removal of petitioner from service passed by respondent on 30-08-2005.

2. Briefly stated facts are that:-

Petitioner a post graduate in Power Engineering was appointed as a Lecturer with Visvesaraya Regional College of Engineering at Nagpur (VRCE) now known as VNIT a deemed University. In the year 2004, he was working as Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering.

3. On 11-05-2004, petitioner was served with a charge-sheet. The articles of charge alleged that three students Rajesh Rentapalli, Saurav Kumar and Malay Biswas of VIIIth Semester Mechanical Engineering lodged complaints on 26-12-2003 alleging therein that petitioner was compelling them to join tuition and accepted money from those students.

4. Petitioner responded to the chargesheet vide his written statement dated 01-06-2004. He raised a defence of false implication and denied the charges in toto.

5. The Director of respondent/Institute appointed Shri Justice M.S. Deshpande, former Judge of this Court as an Enquiry Officer to hold an enquiry into the charges framed against the petitioner. During the course of enquiry, in all five witnesses were examined including complainant Malay Biswas. Considering the evidence and material made available on record, Enquiry Officer came to the conclusion that charges framed were not proved.

6. Report of enquiry was submitted to the disciplinary authority. Second show cause notice was issued to petitioner in the background of resolution of Board of Governors dated 06-07-2005. In response to the second show cause notice dated 20-07-2005, petitioner submitted his explanation on 05-08-2005. The Disciplinary Authority on 30-08-2005 disagreeing with the findings recorded by Enquiry Officer imposed punishment of removal of petitioner from service, which is the subject matter of instant Writ Petition.

7. The learned Counsel for petitioner Shri D.V. Chauhan assailed the order of punishment removing the petitioner from service on several grounds. The basic challenge is to the fundamental error committed by the Disciplinary Authority in disagreeing with the findings recorded by the learned Enquiry Officer that there was no evidence to hold the petitioner guilty of the charges levelled. Another contention raised on behalf of petitioner is that principles of natural justice were violated as second show cause notice issued to him indicates that Disciplinary Authority finally arrived at the conclusion and as per Rule 15(2) of the Central Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965, tentative reasons which were to be communicated to the petitioner were not communicated. The learned Counsel would submit that the reasons recorded by the Disciplinary Authority are grossly erroneous and the punishment imposed on the petitioner removing him from service is against the principles of natural justice, arbitrary and illegal.

8. In response to the submissions raised on behalf of petitioner Shri Parchure, learned Counsel for respondents submitted that in totality of the facts and circumstances, previous complaints and past antecedents of petitioner findings recorded by Enquiry Officer were not accepted by Disciplinary Authority and by assigning proper reasons Disciplinary Authority has arrived at the conclusion that petitioner was to be removed from the service. The learned Counsel would submit that learned Enquiry Officer had not properly considered the evidence and material placed on record. Complaints of two other students were totally ignored and so Disciplinary Authority was right in disagreeing with the findings recorded by learned Enquiry Officer.

9. In view of the rival contentions raised by learned Counsel for the parties, we have to now examine the first contention raised by petitioner. It is not in dispute that at the relevant time, petitioner was working as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering and he was governed by Central Civil Services (Classifi