The principles of natural justice mandate an opportunity for a charge-sheeted employee to respond to the inquiry findings before disciplinary action is taken.

ORAL JUDGMENT :-

1. Despite service of court notice, none appears for the petitioner. No appearance is entered by the petitioner either through a representative or an Advocate after the court notice was served in the backdrop of the learned advocate for the petitioner being elevated as the Honourable Judge of this Court.

2. None appears even for the respondent.

3. Considering the above, I could have dismissed this petition in default. However, I am deciding the same on it's merits.

4. I have gone through the petition paper book and the detailed Part I award, delivered by the II Labour Court, Ahmednagar dated 29.12.2000. The Labour Court was dealing with a preliminary issue as under:-

"Does the second party workman prove that the enquiry conducted against him by the first party is illegal, improper and against the principles of natural justice?"

5. The Labour Court concluded on the basis of the enquiry before it, as well as on the basis of the additional evidence adduced, that the respondent was not given an opportunity to submit an explanation to the charge sheet. No show cause notice was issued along with the charge sheet. It is settled law in the light of the judgment in the case of Om Prakash Yadav Vs. Union of India and others [2009 (121) FlR 151], that the employer cannot proceed to conduct an enquiry without giving a show cause notice on the charge sheet to a workman and without considering his reply. Paragraph No.7 of the said judgment reads as under:-

" 7. In view of the above admitted facts of the case in adjudicating the question of legality of the charge- sheet disclosing the name of the enquiry officer, I find that it is the settled principles of law that after issuing the charge-sheet the principles of natural justice is required to be followed by giving an opportunity to the delinquent employee to submit a reply to the same. On receipt of such reply the disciplinary authority is to decide as to whether the enquiry proceeding is required to be conducted. In the event the decision is taken by the disciplinary authority to conduct enquiry proceeding without giving opportunity to the delinquent employee to give reply to the charge-sheet, the decision making process suffers from the violation of the principles of natural justice on the ground of biasness. In this regard the relevant portions of the decision State of Punjab v. V.K. Khanna (supra) are quoted below:

34. The High Court while delving into the issue went into the factum of announcement of the Chief Minister in regard to appointment of an Inquiry Officer to substantiate the frame of mind of the authorities and thus depicting bias. What bias means has already been dealt with by us earlier in this judgment, as such it does not require any further dilation but the factum of announcement has been taken note of as an illustration to a mindse viz. the inquiry shall proceed irrespective of the reply. Is it an indication of a free and fair attitude towards the concerned officer? The answer cannot possibly be in the affirmative. It is well settled in Service Jurisprudence that the concerned authority has to apply its mind upon receipt of reply to the charge-sheet or show-cause as the case may be, as to whether a further inquiry is called for. In the event upon deliberations and due considerations it is in the affirmative the inquiry follows but not otherwise and it is this part of Service Jurisprudence on which reliance was placed by Mr. Subramaniam and on that score, strongly criticised the conduct of the Respondents here and accused them of being biased. We do find some justification in such a criticism upon considerati