IMPORTANT POINT
The judgment establishes that allegations of fraud and forgery must be supported by evidence, and impugned orders lacking such evidence are bad for want of authority of law.

JUDGMENT :

1. Heard Shri H.N. Singh, learned Senior Counsel assisted by Shri G.S. Mishra, learned counsel for the petitioner and Shri Neeraj Tripathi, learned Additional Advocate General for the State-respondents.

2. The petitioner before this Court has been working as a lecturer in the institution and his services were regularized way back on 25.04.2006. He is aggrieved now by the order passed by the Regional Joint Director of Education dated 19.03.2020, holding the appointment of the petitioner to be bad for being result of fraud and forgery and thus directed for stoppage of payment of salary of the petitioner, and also the consequential order passed by the District Inspector of Schools on 20.03.2020 withholding the payment of salary of the petitioner and further directing the authorized controller to take appropriate action under the Intermediate Education Act, 1921 against illegal and fraudulent appointment of petitioner.

3. Briefly stated facts of the case are that petitioner was initially appointed on ad-hoc basis as a lecturer against a substantive vacancy on 20.01.1991. His appointment came to be approved on 07.03.1991 and thus petitioner started functioning in the institution and was paid salary accordingly. In view of the section 33C of the U.P. Secondary Education (Services Selection Board) Act, 1982, the Regional Joint Director of Education passed an order with the condition that if any fact was found to have been concealed, his regularization shall automatically stands cancelled. This order was passed on 25.04.2006 and thereafter nothing happened until a dispute arose of seniority amongst three teachers namely the petitioner, one Uday Narayan Dwivedi and Chandbhan yadav so as to be appointed as officiating principal of the institution. It transpires that the Regional Joint Director of Education who was seized with the matter, called for some report and on the basis of report, he questioned the order of the District Inspector of Schools giving charge to one Sri Uday Narayan Dwivedi as officiating principal of the institution and directed that the order be immediately recalled. It is in that process that he held, since one Ramujagir Shukla was recommended to be appointed with the formal approval granted by the District Inspector of Schools on 07.03.1991 and since Ramujagir Shukla did not turn up to join then his appointment must have been cancelled and then only any financial approval could have been granted to another teacher Basu Dev Singh (petitioner) as lecturer in Geography but the despatch register did not demonstrate the approval order to have been issued to either Ramujagir Shukla or Basu Dev Singh and thus concluded that appointment of petitioner Basu Dev Singh to be prima facie bad and directed that the payment of salary of Basu Dev Singh be stopped. It is as a sequential to the order passed by the Regional Joint Director of Education that District Inspector of Schools passed order on 20.03.2020.

4. Two fold argument has been advanced:

(i) Once the regularization order had been passed, taking recourse to the provisions contained under the U.P. Secondary Education (Services Selection Board) Act, 1982, until and unless that order was recalled or reviewed by putting petitioner to prior notice and giving him reasonable opportunity of hearing, the Regional Joint Director of Education was not justified in ordering for stoppage of payment of salary of the petitioner and,

(ii) On a mere apprehension and doubt being raised regarding the despatch letter of the year 1991, the Regional Joint Director of Education could not have returned a finding that the approval order to the appointment of the petitioner was forged/fraudulent.

5. Yet another argument has been advanced that the Regional Joint Director of Education does not act as court to issue an interim direction that since prima facie the approval order appeared to be doubtful, so the payment of salary be stopped despite the fact that petitioner’s regularization had alr