Supreme Court pulls up Army for discharging military personnel without enquiry

New Delhi:  The Supreme Court has pulled up the Army for discharging an operator in Corps of Artillery without even an enquiry for the simple reason that on four occasions he had overstayed during his leave.

A three-Judge Bench of Justices T.S. Thakur, V. Gopala Gowda and Ms. R. Banumathi allowing an appeal from Veerendra Kumar Dubey against the Army Tribunal’s order set aside the discharge order. Pointing out that the appellant had already crossed the age of  superannuation, the bench said interest of justice will be sufficiently served if we direct that  the  appellant  shall be treated to have been in service till the time he would  have  completed the qualifying service for grant of pension. 

The Bench said “No back wages shall, however, be admissible. Benefit of continuity  of  service for all other purpose shall, however, be granted to the appellant including  pension. Monetary benefits payable to the appellant shall be released expeditiously but  not later  than  four months.”

The Bench observed the fact that an individual has put in long years of service giving more often than not the best part of his life to armed  forces,  that he has been exposed to hard stations and difficult living conditions during his tenure and that he may be completing pensionable service are factors which the authority competent to discharge would have even  independent of the procedure been required to take into consideration while exercising  the power of discharge.

Writing the judgment Justice Thakur said “we find that  no enquiry whatsoever was conducted by the Commanding Officer at any stage against the appellant as required  under rules. More importantly, there is nothing on record to suggest that the authority competent had taken into consideration the long  service rendered  by  the appellant, the difficult living conditions and the hard stations at which he had served. There is nothing on record to suggest  that  the  nature  of  he misconduct leading to the award of red ink entries was  so  unacceptable that the competent authority had no option but to direct  his  discharge  to prevent indiscipline in the force. The unfairness in any such situation  makes it necessary to bring in safeguards to prevent miscarriage of justice. That is precisely what the procedural safeguards purport to do in  the present case.”