Fundamental Defect In Enquiry Was Not Employee’s Fault: SC Orders Bank To Grant Retrospective Promotion With Monetary Benefits To Employee
The Supreme Court partly allowed the Appeal challenging the Judgment of the Telangana High Court which held that the promotion could not be granted.
The Supreme Court has ordered the Bank of Baroda to grant a retrospective promotion to a former employee with all monetary benefits since the fundamental defect in the enquiry of his case was due to no fault of the employee.
The Court partly allowed the Appeal challenging the Judgment of the Telangana High Court which held that promotion up to Scale-V cannot be granted to the Appellant as there was no adjudication in the order of the Writ Court.
A Bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice KV Viswanathan held, “Insofar as promotion with effect from 28.07.2001 for the post of Manager Grade-III is concerned, we order that the appellant should be granted the same with all monetary benefits since the fundamental defect in the enquiry was due to no fault of the appellant. The defect was also accepted by the Bank when they did not press the appeal. The benefit of promotion to Manager GradeIII from 28.07.2001 is covered in the expression “consequential benefits” as ordered in the judgment of the learned Single Judge dated 20.07.2017 in Writ Petition No. 7616 of 2008. We say so on the facts of the present case.”
Senior Advocate Abhijit Basu represented the Appellant, while AOR Praveena Gautam appeared for the Respondents.
Brief Facts
The Appellant was appointed as a probationary officer at the Bank of Baroda (Bank) in 1983 and promoted to Manager Scale-II in 1992. While serving as a Branch Manager in Gujarat, he was issued show cause notices in 1999 and 2000 for alleged irregularities. A charge sheet followed in 2000, after which his promotion from Scale-II to Scale-III was withheld due to pending disciplinary proceedings.
In 2001, the disciplinary proceedings resulted in a minor penalty of reduction in pay by one stage for three years without cumulative effect. The Appellant’s appeals to the Appellate and Reviewing Authorities were rejected. Subsequently, his promotion, which had been kept in abeyance, was cancelled in August 2002.
Court’s Observations
The Supreme Court noted that after the penalty was imposed in the disciplinary proceedings and confirmed right up to the Reviewing Authority, the Single Bench of the High Court set aside the disciplinary proceedings and ordered that the Appellant was entitled to all consequential benefits.
“A junior officer, who was competing for promotion with the appellant, was made the enquiry officer and a clear case of likelihood of bias was made out by the appellant and it was accepted by the learned Single Judge. The employer Bank did not even contest this position before the Division Bench and merely wanted the question of law to be left open. The appellant was not at fault for the defect in the enquiry. No fresh enquiry was initiated nor was any liberty sought from the Division Bench,” the Court noted.
The Court remarked, “The appellant has been running from pillar to post, for the last two decades. On 10.07.2022, when he sought compliance, all that the respondent-authorities did was to pay him a “princely” sum of Rs. 19,446/-, which was the reduced pay for the three years. Alas, even after succeeding in a long drawn and hard-fought legal battle the appellant was left only with a pyrrhic victory.”
Consequently, the Court held, “With the above observations, the Appeal is partly allowed. The impugned judgment dated 24.08.2023 passed by the High Court for the State of Telangana at Hyderabad in Contempt Case No. 311 of 2023 is set aside.”
Accordingly, the Supreme Court partly allowed the Appeal.
Cause Title: K Samba Moorthy v. Sanjiv Chadha & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 110)
Appearance:
Appellant: Senior Advocate Abhijit Basu; AOR Tatini Basu; Advocates Byrapaneni Suyodhan and Kumar Shashank
Respondents: AOR Praveena Gautam; Advocates Pawan Shukla, Tissy Annie Thomas and Akanksha Tyagi
