Give equal punishment for similar offences by staff: HC to TS

HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court mandated the state government to maintain the equality clause when awarding punishment to employees for committing similar offences. The court said awarding different punishments for similar offences indicated clear discrimination, which would be tantamount to denial of equality as guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Surepalli Nanda made the directions while dealing a petition filed by a retired treasury department employee, whose pension was withheld permanently to the tune of 30 per cent on the ground that he had been proved guilty in misappropriation of treasury funds. Another employee, who was facing similar charges, was not punished but his pension was nominally withheld for a limited period.

The petitioner in the case, S.M.P.M. Hashmi worked as sub-treasury officer, Karimnagar, and retired in 2001. In 2004, charges were made against the petitioner that he had caused a financial loss to the exchequer by allowing some government employees to fraudulently withdraw funds from the treasury. Some of the charges were that Rs 75,000 was paid to one Syed Ameena Ahmed, senior accountant in the district treasury, towards medical advance bill without sanction orders, and another medical reimbursement bill of Rs 5,410 was processed by the same officer which was also a fraudulent action.

Another sub-treasury officer, Karimnagar, also drew an amount of Rs 17,662 towards medical reimbursement though the bill did not receive proper sanction.

In his explanation, the petitioner submitted that he had no authority to sanction the bills since he was only a sub-treasury officer and that the bills were prepared by the district treasury officer and passed by the assistant treasury officer and as such he was not responsible for both preparing and passing bills for payment. Several employees of the Karimnagar treasury office were charged with the same allegations and the government conducted a common inquiry against all the charged officers.

Not satisfied with his explanation, the government declared him as involved in a conspiracy and withheld 30 per cent of his pension permanently. He had challenged it before the AP Administrative Tribunal, which rejected his plea in 2008 to quash the punishment.

In 2017, the High Court, in a case before it by another employee, who had faced similar charges, quashed the GO of imposing 30 per cent cut of pension and the punishment was modified to withholding 2 per cent cut in pension for a period of one year. Thereafter, on the request of petitioner Hashmi, the district treasury officer forwarded a communication to state level authorities to apply the same orders to the petitioner also.  But, they were denied. Hashmi then approached the High Court.