Madhya Pradesh High Court: The Division Bench of Sheel Nagu and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, JJ., allowed the petition while hearing an appeal against the order against the order passed by the Jabalpur bench of the central administrative tribunal in O.A. No.697/2014 on 17-01-2020 in the matter where the application preferred by the petitioner challenging the order of penalty of compulsory retirement was rejected.
The present petition was initiated by the petitioners before the court after not getting the desired relief in the original application No. 697/2014 and then in the review application besides challenging the order of penalty of compulsory retirement and also the order of Appellate Authority rejecting the appeal against the order of penalty.
In the instant case, the advocate for petitioners Amit Seth refarined from going into the actual merit of the case confined his argument on a single ground that based on the rulings of the apex court in the cases of Balaji Baliram Mupade v. State of Maharashtra, 2020 SCC Online SC 893 and Anil Rai v. State of Bihar, (2001) 7 SCC 318 the order in question, thus passed by the Tribunal has vitiated the law as there was an unusual delay in the reservation and pronunciation of the judgement and therefore the tribunal should reconsider the original application of the aggrieved party.
As far as the present matter was concerned the following opinion was formed by the Court:
“It is the need of the hour to emphasize over the need to pronounce judgment expeditiously and curtailing the time gap between reserving of a case and pronouncing of judgment to the bare minimum, it is vivid that the Tribunal heard and reserved the original application preferred on 20.02.2019 whereafter the impugned judgment was pronounced by the Tribunal on 17.01.2020 i.e. after nearly 11 months, which is a very long period of time”
Court emphasized to bridge the time gap in the reservation and pronunciation of the judgement to avoid the unnecessary delay.
In the light of the facts in the present matter, the Court dismissed the orders passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal in O.A No. 697/2014 and also the order passed in the Review Application No. 03/2020 and eventually the court directed the tribunal to re-hear the matter and pronounce the judgement at the earliest.[Sudesh Kumar Yadav v. Union of India, W.P No. 24337 of 2021, decided on 23-12-2021]
Suchita Shukla, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.
For petitioners: Shri Amit Seth, (Advocate)
For respondent 1: Shri J.K Jain, Assistant Solicitor General
For respondent 3: Shri C.M Tiwari, Advocate
