The main legal point established in the judgment is the significance of obtaining approvals for both initiation of disciplinary proceedings and issuance of the charge memo from the competent authority in upholding the disciplinary action.

JUDGMENT

(Prayer: Writ Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India praying to issue a Writ of Certiorari to call for the records pertaining to the impugned order dated 30.03.2021 of the Hon''ble Central Administrative Tribunal, Madras Bench in M.A.458/2019 in O.A.No.310/01097/2019 and quash the same.)

R. Hemalatha, J.

1. Challenging the order dated 30.03.2021 of Central Administrative Tribunal, Chennai, in O.A.No.310/01097/2019, the present writ petition is filed.

2. Briefly into the facts of the case :

The petitioner joined the Customs Department as Appraising Officer in 1993 and was promoted to Indian Revenue Service in the year 2003. He was posted as Assistant Commissioner of Central Excise & Customs initially at Salem and later at Mumbai. On 18.06.2009, he was issued with a charge memo prior to which he was placed under suspension in February 2009 itself. There were two charges against him one pertaining to unauthorised absence from duty from 05.01.2007 and the second one pertaining to observing hunger strike in his native town for seven days from 3rd February 2009 to 9th February 2009 in support of Sri Lankan Tamils and also for writing a letter to the President of All India Congress Party criticizing the policies of the Congress Government especially regarding the Indo-Sri Lankan Peace Accord. After a detailed process of inquiry in which a reasonable opportunity was given to the petitioner, final orders dated 08.08.2014 was issued inflicting the penalty of pay-reduction by three stages for a period of three years. The petitioner''s representation dated 25.06.2015 addressed to the President of India did not yield any response and his subsequent representation dated 16.04.2019 citing certain procedural lapses on the part of the employer also remained unresponded. In the meanwhile, the petitioner had also obtained certain information under Right to Information (RTI) based on which he had approached the Central Administrative Tribunal in OA.1097/2019 in which M.A.458/2019 was filed for condonation of delay. The delay was condoned. However, O.A.No. 1097/2019 was dismissed as devoid of merits. This is the subject-matter in the instant writ petition.

3. Heard, Mr. Balamurugan, Party-in-Person and Mr.V.Sundareswaran, learned Senior Panel Counsel, appearing for the respondents.

4. Mr.Balamurugan, the petitioner contended that the entire disciplinary proceedings initiated against him was erroneous in the sense that while approval for initiation of disciplinary proceedings against him was obtained from the Union Finance Minister who is the Disciplinary Authority, no such separate approval was obtained for issuance of charge memo. This, according to the petitioner, had vitiated the entire proceedings and therefore the charge memo itself is liable to be quashed. He had also relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in Union of India & others vs. B.V.Gopinath reported in 2014 (1) SCC 351, wherein it was held thus:

"...Ultimately, it appears that the charge memo was not put up for approval by the Finance Minister. Therefore, it would not be possible to accept the submission of Ms.Indira Jaising that the approval granted by the Finance Minister for initiation of departmental proceedings would also amount to approval of the charge memo."

It was also his contention that the two stages, one of approval for initiation of disciplinary proceedings and the second for approval for framing of charges, are prerequisites for any disciplinary action and the absence of anyone of the two prerequisites makes the entire exercise defective. Furthermore, his contention is that neither his resignation in 2009 nor his application for Voluntary Retirement in 2017 was accepted by the respondents putting him into distress and also that he has been denied promotion for more than 10 years making it appear like ''witch hunting'' for his only fault of expressing his sentiments supporting his fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is