Allahabad High Court: A writ petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution challenging the order of Divisional Head Manager, UPSRTC, whereby petitioner’s appeal against the order of his removal from service was dismissed; was decided by a Single Judge Bench comprising of Manoj Kumar Gupta, J., wherein the said impugned order was quashed holding it to be a non-speaking order.
The petitioner was holding the post of senior clerk in UPSRTC and was subjected to disciplinary proceedings on the charge that he misbehaved with the station incharge of a certain depot. The petitioner denied the incident. Petitioner’s case was that respondent 5-complainant was an interested witness, and although it was alleged that the said incident took place in front of entire staff, still no independent witness was examined. Petitioner submitted that the order of removal was passed in a mechanical manner observing that the petitioner failed to prove that the charges leveled against him were not correct; however the burden to prove the charges was on the respondents. It was further submitted that the order dismissing petitioner’s appeal was also passed in a mechanical manner without adverting to the specific grounds raised by the petitioner in his appeal.
In order to settle the controversy, the High Court perused the record and found that the order of appellate authority did not even refer to the grounds on which the petitioner challenged the order of his removal from service. The reason passed by the appellate authority was a non-speaking order which failed to disclose reasons for arriving at the conclusion that contentions raised by the petitioner were without any substance. The appeal filed by the petitioner was a statutory appeal under UPSRTC Employees Service Regulations, 1984 and while considering such an appeal it was incumbent upon the appellate authority to have addressed itself to the grounds raised by the petitioner in the appeal. The Court observed that it is well settled that reasons are the heart and soul of any order and in the absence thereof, such order becomes vulnerable.
Consequently, the petition was allowed and the order of the appellate authority was set aside sending the matter back for fresh consideration. [Shamsuddin v. State of U.P., 2018 SCC OnLine All 211, order dated 14.03.2018]
