JUDGMENT :

Sandeep V. Marne, J.

Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith. With the consent of the Ld. counsels for the parties, Petition is taken up for hearing.

2. Stay of departmental enquiry during pendency of criminal trial is often sought by delinquent employees on the ground that conduct of departmental enquiry before criminal trial discloses his/her defence thereby causing prejudice in the criminal trial. This is yet another case where Petitioner seeks such stay. Petition arises out of challenge to the interim order dated 27 March 2023 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal (Tribunal) thereby rejecting prayer for stay of departmental enquiry during pendency of Original Application No.122 of 2023. In his Original Application, Petitioner has sought the final relief of stay of departmental enquiry during pendency of criminal trial.

3. Petitioner is functioning as Data Processing Assistant in the Employees Provident Fund Organization. The employer has unearthed some fraudulent transactions in the matter of settlement of fictitious claims thereby causing huge financial loss to the corpus of the Fund. It suspects some of its officials and employees to be the perpetrators of such fraudulent activities. Therefore, an FIR came to be registered against Petitioner and others on 31 December 2021 for offences punishable under sections 420, 409, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code and section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 for investigating cases of fraudulent withdrawals from EPF corpus. In the FIR, it is alleged inter alia that Petitioner while functioning as Data Processing Assistant at the Regional Office, Kandivali-II during the years 2019-2021 enabled settlement of fraudulent claims for provident fund in respect of 20 establishments causing loss of Rs. 21,68,88,663/- to the EPF corpus. It is further alleged that the settlements were done by opening PF accounts in the names of fraudulent and bogus members. Petitioner came to be placed under suspension with effect from 25 August 2021. After completion of investigations, Central Bureau of Investigation has filed Chargesheet (Final Report) on 10 May 2022 before the CBI Special Court at Rouse Avenue, New Delhi.

4. A Memorandum of Chargesheet for conducting departmental enquiry dated 25 June 2022 came to be served on Petitioner alleging four charges. In the first charge, it is alleged that Petitioner while functioning as DPA at Regional Office, Kandivli (East) during the years 2019 to June 2021, deliberately misused the functionality of Pole-Mapping and Task-Mapping in EPFO Application Software by assigning different roles of SS/AD/APFC to various officials/officers including outsourced DEOs with ill-conceived motive of facilitating insertion of non-bonafide persons as members with zero balance. This facilitated settlement of large number of fictitious claims in respect of various establishments. In second charge, it is alleged that Petitioner deliberately shared his login credentials with outsourced DEOs with motive to facilitate insertion of non- bona fide members as members with zero balance. In the third charge, it is alleged that Petitioner unauthorizedly endorsed certain physical claim forms with malafide intention to facilitate receipt entry of fictitious claims and its settlements. In the fourth charge, it is alleged that Petitioner was found to be in unauthorized possession of two DSC-Dongles pertaining to certain PF covered establishments and could not offer any convincing explanation.

5. The Disciplinary Authority appointed an Enquiry Officer vide order dated 15 September 2022 for conducting enquiry in the Memorandum of chargesheet dated 25 June 2022. The Enquiry Officer scheduled the enquiry on 21 October 2022. Petitioner appointed Defence Assistant vide letter dated 18 November 2022. It appears that enquiry commenced and the stage of inspection of documents was underway. At this stage, Petitioner filed representation dated 13 February 2023 seeking stay