The court emphasized that a dismissal must be proportionate to the misconduct and that procedural violations in disciplinary inquiries can invalidate the outcome.

JUDGMENT :

Mahesh Chandra Tripathi, J.

Heard Sri Kunal Ravi Singh, learned Chief Standing Counsel and Sri Fuzail Ahmad Ansari, learned Standing Counsel for the State-appellants and Sri Anil Kumar Mehrotra, learned counsel for respondent No. 1-petitioner.

2. The instant intra-Court Special Appeal under Chapter VIII, Rule 5 of the Allahabad High Court Rules, 1952 (hereinafter referred as the 'Rules, 1952') has been preferred against judgment and order dated 21.8.2023 passed by learned Single Judge in Writ A No. 11040 of 2020 (Amar Singh v. State of U.P. and others). For ready reference, the operative portion of the judgment and order dated 21.8.2023 is reproduced as under :

''……….65. Having gone through the authorities cited by the learned counsel appearing for the respective parties, I am of the view that the propositions as discussed in those judgments are not contradictory to each other.

66. The principle of law is well-settled that interference by the High Court or Tribunal in the judicial exercise of power would not extend to appreciating the evidence and coming to a different conclusion than what Domestic Tribunal has already arrived at but the question is as to whether this decision making process was sound and was not vitiated and that a man of ordinary prudence would have arrived at a decision/conclusion which could be said to be a rational one on the material available. It is a case where the department failed to present any evidence whatsoever in support of the charge that petitioner circulated the message to defame the Government.

67. In the case of Union of India v. Sardar Bahadur, (1972) 4 SCC 618, the Court held very clearly that any statement made in a criminal trial would have been said to be admissible had the persons who gave the statement were produced by the department before the Inquiry Officer to be cross-examined by the delinquent employee and having failed to do so the department could not have complained of the Inquiry Officer not appreciating the same.

68. Coming to the authorities cited by learned counsel for the petitioner first in the case of Wednesbury Corporation (supra) I find that in the said case the Court of appeal has held that it is entitled to investigate the action of local authority in order to find out whether it had taken relevant material into consideration while arriving at a finding or conversely refused to take into account or neglected it even though available. The Court, therefore, held that the answer to the question if goes to the authority or in other words like in the present case, one can conclude that authority's action is within the four corners of the matter which they ought to consider but even such a decision if tested on the IQ of a reasonable man and the Court concludes that such a reasonable man could not come to such a conclusion, the Court would still interfere. So not only decision taking process even the conclusion arrived at for the decision is open to judicial review.

69. In the case of Gohil Vishvaraj Hanubhai (supra) the Court discussed in detailed the Wednesbury unreasonableness on the point of power of judicial review. The Court held that the irrationality of a decision making power would account to akin of 'Wednesbury unreasonableness'. In support of this, the view taken by Lord Diplock was reiterated and it was observed that the decision should be so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that given an application of mind by a reasonable man, it may not be approved of.

70. In the present case I find that second charge was not at all proved by the Inquiry Officer. The first charge was proved partly only and that too on the ground that petitioner had himself made an admission, fair enough, that while trying to delete the message he got the same forwarded in whatsapp group by wrongly touching the icon. This also happened in the midnight hours, therefore, applying the definition of misconduct given in Strout's dictionary (supra) there was nothi