IN THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH AT JABALPUR BEFORE HON'BLE SHRI JUSTICE VIVEK JAIN WRIT PETITION No. 24633 of 2018 SMT. PRAVEEN PRAKASH Versus NATIONAL INSURANCE CO. LTD. AND OTHERS Appearance:

Shri Rajesh Nema - Advocate with Shri Chandra Shekhar Upadhyay -

Advocate for the petitioner with petitioner in person.

Shri Anoop Nair - Senior Advocate with Ms. Akashmi Trived - Advocate for the respondents.

ORDER (Reserved on : 07.10.2025)

(Pronounced on : 09.12.2025)

The By way of present petition, challenge is made to the penalty order Annexure P-11 dated 30.01.2017 and subsequent appellate order dated 29.05.2015 (Annexure P-28) so also order Annexure P-29 dated 16.03.2018, whereby memorial preferred by the petitioner against the penalty order dated 30.01.2017 has been rejected. The petitioner has been dismissed from service by the impugned termination order Annexure P-11 and the said dismissal order has been confirmed in appeal and also in memorial representation preferred by the petitioner.

2. Learned counsel for the petitioner alonwith the petitioner present in person vehemently argued before this court that the impugned termination order Annexure P-11 is without jurisdiction and therefore, is unsustainable. It is argued that the petitioner was working on the post of Administrative Officer in National Insurance Company Limited, which is a Scale-IOfficer post. It is contended that as per the Schedule-A to National Insurance Company (Conduct Discipline and Appeal)Rules, 2014 (for short ‘CDA Rules, 2014’). The disciplinary authority for Scale-IOfficer is an Officer in Scale-V and appellate authority is an Officer in Scale-VI, whereas in the present case the dismissal order has been issued by a Scale- VIOfficer holding the rank of Deputy General Manager, who was in fact an appellate authority and could not have issued the penalty of dismissal from service and therefore, the dismissal order is without jurisdiction being passed by higher authority.

3. To elaborate the submissions, it is contended that the disciplinary authority is Scale-VOfficer and though there is a note appended to the schedule that penalty of removal and dismissal shall be awarded by an authority not lower than appointing authority and Scale-VIOfficer is the appointing authority, but still the appointing authority could not have imposed the penalty of dismissal on the petitioner and the penalty ought to have been first imposed by Scale-VOfficer and then it could have been ratified by a Scale-VIOfficer and could not have been straight away imposed by a Scale-VIOfficer. On this assertion, it is contended that the impugned order is without jurisdiction as has been unauthorizedly issued by a higher authority.

4. On merits, it is contended that no misconduct of the petitioner is made out, because the charge sheet was issued to hervide Annexure P-9 in which as many as four charges were leveled upon the petitioner, which related to the petitioner being unauthorizedly absent from duties of the company from 08.05.2015 onwards. Other charges related to sending threatening emails to the supervisory authorities of the company and posting demeaning content on various Facebook groups against the company management.The petitioner, it is vehemently argued, had no fault in the matter and the emails stated to be sent by the petitioner could not have been inferred to be sent by the petitioner, because the IP addresses of the sending of emails was not disclosed to the petitioner. The petitioner had heavily relied on her defence that the emails were not sent by her, but her account had been hacked and she prayed for disclosure of IP addresses of the computer of the company in its offices at Indore so that it could be revealed that in fact, the email was sent an Officer stationed at Indore, and not by the petitioner, just to falsely implicate the petitioner by hacking her Email id. In absence of there being any clinching electronic evidence to connect the petitioner with the questioned emai