The disciplinary authority's failure to record its findings on each charge, the denial of the respondent's right to nominate a defence helper, and the appellate order's failure to comply with the requirements of Rule 1731 all rendered the punishment order invalid.

( 1 ) THE Union of India has preferred this appeal against an order passed by A. K. Sinha, J. , dated the 12th of March, 1969 by which the Rule obtained by the respondent Dr. S. B. Biswas was made absolute and the impugned order of removal which is to be found at page 51 of the Paper-Book was struck down as invalid. Various grounds were taken by the petitioner-respondents but the Court only founded its judgment on two points: firstly, that the order of punishment was defective inasmuch as the material portion of the date, namely, the date from which the order was taken effect was kept blank by the punishing authority and it was subsequently filled in by a clerk at the office of the D. M. O. who delivered the punishment order to the respondent; secondly, that the appellate order which is at page 53, passed by the General Manager, did not comply with the requirements of Rule 1731 of the Railway Establishment Code, Vol. 1 which lays down the mode in which the appellate function was to be exercised. The respondent has also filed a cross-objection before us relying upon the grounds which were kept open by the learned judge as unnecessary because he thought that the other two findings were sufficient to dispose of the Rule. We have, therefore, to go through the points urged by the respondent in his petition.

( 2 ) SO far as the appellate order is concerned, it is quite evident that the requirements of Rule 1731 which have been explained by this Court on numerous occasions previously, have not been complied with by the appellate authority. Even if his orders were read as beneficial to the administration as possible, it did not deal with the requirements of Clause (a) of Sub-rule (ii) of Rule 1731, namely, whether the procedure prescribed in this rule has been complied with or if such non-compliance has resulted in any violation of the Constitution or a failure of justice. In his memorandum of appeal to the General Manager, the respondent complained about the procedure but the General Manager did not specifically give his decision on this complaint. The finding of the Court below on this point must therefore stand. Coming now to the original order of punishment, though we are in agreement with the views taken by the trial court that the order of removal suffers from serious infirmity inasmuch as the date of giving effect to the removal order was not filled up by the punishing authority but by somebody else who had no authority to punish the respondents and though we also agree that such a practice should not be encouraged, we are of the opinion that in the instant case, the defect was not such as to go to the root of the jurisdiction to make the punishment order invalid. From a reading of the entire text of the order it was evident that the punishing authority wanted to give immediate effect to his order but since the order could not be handed over by the punishing authority who was a superior officer, he handed it down to the immediate superior to the petitioner, namely, the D. M. O. who was to fill up the gaps recording the date after delivering the punishment order. In our opinion, this practice should be stopped because, if this is allowed to continue, it is the Railway administration itself which may have to suffer in other cases, if any clerical or other officer fills up the gap and makes any mistake in doing this small job. In the facts of the instant case, as we have already stated, we arc not satisfied that the defect goes to render the punishment order without jurisdiction. But even if our finding on this point is contrary to that of the trial Court, the punishment order cannot be sustained because of other grounds which have been urged before us.

( 3 ) MR. Chakravarti on behalf of the respondents has drawn our attention to Rule 1713 of the Railway Establishment Code which runs as follows: "the Disciplinary Authority shall, if it is not the Inquiring Authority, consider the record of the Inquiry and record of