IMPORTANT POINT
The inquiry process for major penalties must adhere to principles of natural justice, requiring evidence from the Establishment and proper notice to the accused.

JUDGMENT :

J.J. Munir, J.

1. This writ petition is directed against an order of the Managing Director, U.P. Power Corporation Limited, Lucknow (for short, ‘the Corporation’) dated 12th October, 2023 dismissing the petitioner from service and directing recovery of a sum of Rs. 37,94,105/- from the him on account of loss caused to the Corporation. Also, under challenge is an appellate order dated 29.08.2024 passed by the Chairman of the Corporation dismissing the petitioner’s departmental appeal and affirming the order of first instance passed by the Managing Director.

2. Shorn of unnecessary details, the petitioner was an Office Assistant-III in the Office of the Executive Engineer Electricity Urban Distribution Division-I, Noida. The petitioner’s case is that she was given financial duties within three months of joining service contrary to the Corporation’s Circular dated 05.03.1994 which provides for assignment of financial duties to employees after they have put in at least ten years of service. The petitioner was given charge of capital accounts and also mediclaims besides G.P.F. She was also given duties of revenue collection from consumers. The petitioner was asked by the Executive Engineer to return her receipt books, which she indicated in her reply to have already been deposited. Her salary for the month of June, 2016 was stopped but later on released on 15.10.2016. The petitioner’s reply was sought, apparently regarding some shortfall in deposit of monies collected. By a letter dated 17.07.2017, the Executive Engineer Electricity Urban Distribution-I, Noida directed the petitioner to deposit a sum of Rs. 37 lacs which she had allegedly collected but not deposited. The petitioner says that there is no evidence by even as much as a hint indicating that the petitioner had not deposited what she had collected. The demand was based on a presumption. The petitioner submitted a detailed reply in the matter on 19.07.2017 clearly showing that the inference was founded on presumptions. It is the petitioner’s case that without considering her reply, she was placed under suspension pending inquiry by the Superintending Engineer vide order dated 18.09.2017. She was attached to the Office of the Executive Engineer, Electricity Urban Distribution, VI Noida. She was later on attached to the Office of the Chief Engineer by an order of the Executive Engineer dated 28.10.2017.

3. The grievance also is that subsistence allowance was not regularly paid to the petitioner during the period of her suspension. She was also reported to the Police vide Case Crime No.1090 of 2017, under Sections 420, 409 I.P.C., Police Station Sector 24 Noida, District Gautam Budh Nagar. She was arrested and later on enlarged on bail by this Court vide order dated 03.12.2019 passed in Criminal Misc. Bail Application No. 38507 of 2018. The petitioner was served with a charge sheet dated 15.10.2020 carrying a charge to the effect that she had failed to deposit the sum of Rs.37,94,015/- in the Corporation’s account that she had collected. Another charge that the charge sheet carried was about non maintenance of documents. The petitioner sought copies of the documents relied upon in the charge sheet that were not provided to her, as her case goes, but she was in the end permitted to inspect the original records in the Office of the Managing Director of the Corporation vide letter dated 15.12.2021. The petitioner submitted her reply, answering the charges on 10.05.2022 before the Inquiry Officer, denying the charges and putting forward her defence.

4. It is the petitioner’s case that while the inquiry, on the basis of the first charge sheet, was in progress before the Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited, whereunder the petitioner was immediately serving, another charge sheet dated 03.08.2022 was served upon the petitioner by the Chief Engineer, Inquiry Committee of the Corporation on the selfsame charges as carried in the earlier charge sheet. The petitioner says th