Employee under disciplinary proceedings retains entitlement to salary; failure to comply with court orders leads to potential contempt.

JUDGMENT :

P.Sam Koshy, J.

The matter was taken up for admission after it was registered as Letters Patent Appeal.

2. Heard Mr. M.Shalini, learned Government Pleader for Services III for the appellant. Perused the record.

3. The instant appeal has been filed against the order passed by the learned Single Bench in C.C.No.2078 of 2023 dated 05.08.2025.

4. Vide the impugned order, the learned Single Bench in the contempt case in its operative paragraph has held as under:

“ Having regard to the rival contentions and the material on record, this Court finds that vide interim orders dated 04.08.2023, this Court had only directed to pay the salary as per her entitlement as there is no severance of service of the petitioner. Admittedly, the petitioner was under unauthorized absence till 06.06.2022, when she submitted her joining report, thereafter it was the duty of the respondents to extract work from her by giving posting orders and instead, they have initiated disciplinary proceedings and during the pendency of the disciplinary proceedings, she was entitled to subsistence allowance, but the respondents have failed to make the payment. Therefore, the respondents are directed to make the payment of subsistence allowances to the petitioner within a period of one (1) month from the date of receipt of a copy of this order and if the same is not complied with, the respondents would be liable for Contempt Proceedings and this Court deems it fit and proper to grant liberty to the petitioner to challenge the proceedings denying salaries to the petitioner”.

5. The contempt petition arose out of a pending writ petition i.e., W.P.No.17983 of 2023, wherein interim order was passed on 04.08.2023. The interim order so passed by the learned Single Bench is again reproduced here under:

“However, in the meantime, since there is no severance of service of the petitioner, the respondents are directed to pay the salary to the petitioner as per her entitlement. The payment shall be made within a period of four (04) weeks from the date of receipt of this order.”

6. The writ petitioner before the writ Court i.e., Ms. N. Haripriya got appointed as a Mandal Parishad Development Officer (MPDO) on 09/10.01.2018. It is said that after having worked for some time from 05.07.2019 onwards, the writ petitioner went on unauthorized absence after having initially obtained sanction for leave on 05.07.2019 and 06.07.2019 and she remained absent from duty continuously till 06.06.2022.

7. Meanwhile, for the unauthorized absence, the Department thought it fit for initiating disciplinary proceedings and for which a charge memo was also issued on 08.03.2022. After the charge memo was issued, the writ petitioner reported for duty on 06.06.2022. However, the appellant/Department did not extract any work from the writ petitioner in the light of the pending disciplinary proceedings. Since even after reporting for duty, the appellant/Department was not extracting work from the writ petitioner nor was she being paid the salary.

8. The writ petition i.e., W.P.No.17983 of 2023 was filed seeking for an appropriate direction to the respondents to accept the joining and to grant salary. It was in the said writ petition that an interim order was also sought for before the learned Single Bench for an interim direction directing the State to release the salary. It was in this context that the interim prayer of the writ petitioner was allowed, which is already reproduced in the earlier paragraph.

9. The said order was not complied with and which led to filing of the contempt case i.e., C.C.No.2078 of 2023. The respondents were noticed and called upon to explain as